eXit to Bluesky | Godzilla at 70 | Trailer Talk

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Geeky Brummir Year 8 issue 10. I'm your host, Mr. Ryann Parish. Joining me today, Mr. Keith Bloomfield. [00:00:05] Speaker B: Hello, everybody. [00:00:06] Speaker A: Mr. Sam Edwards. [00:00:07] Speaker C: Hello. [00:00:08] Speaker A: How are we both? [00:00:09] Speaker C: Not bad, thanks. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Pretty spectacular. I recently went to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds live at the nec. I refuse to call it whatever ridiculous name the stadium is now called. [00:00:20] Speaker A: Arena Something something. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that was. That was pretty amazing. [00:00:23] Speaker A: So I've heard it's been like a transcendental experience for some people. Nick Keith. [00:00:27] Speaker B: Oh, it's spectacular. Spectacular. It's rawly emotional in parts. Absolutely spectacular. And he ends in possibly the best way that you could, just him alone on stage with an incredible song. So, yeah, brilliant if you get the chance to see it. I don't think you can now because the UK tour is finished, but if it comes around again, I highly recommend. [00:00:48] Speaker A: It probably come out on DVD or Blu ray as well. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah, they filmed it quite nicely. So yeah, hopefully. [00:00:54] Speaker A: And yourself some. Anything interesting? [00:00:57] Speaker C: I saw the musical based on the music of Steps the other day. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Wildly different things. [00:01:07] Speaker C: Yeah. Not sure I'd describe it as transcendental, but it was fun in a nostalgic sort of way. [00:01:14] Speaker B: Cool. [00:01:14] Speaker A: I've not seen any musicals or music recently, so. We'll skip on today coming from the show where we're talking about why everybody's fleeing a certain bird based app to a new sky, a blue sky. We'll be looking at the latest Frers and what's coming up for the next remainder of 2024 and into 2025. And we're talking about Big G Man's 70th birthday. It is Godzilla's 70th, so we'll be reliving some of our best bits in Godzilla and how we got into it. But we will back. So strange things are afoot in the world of social media. I think for many years we've had this kind of stasis in the world of social media with Facebook, Meta, Instagram, also owned by Meta, and then Twitter. And they've been kind of the three major social medias that everybody's used for a long old time. I think when a certain South African, now US based billionaire bought Twitter now X, a lot of people decided to start investigating alternatives and we saw things like Mastodon and the other one, which I can't remember now, started with an. [00:02:42] Speaker B: A. Oh no, now you've made A. I can't remember. [00:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah, but anyway, there's been a few Twitter alternatives trialed and one seems to be doing quite popular at the Moment which is bluesky. So there's been a lot of decamping from the world of Twitter over to BlueSkoy. So I think it's up to around 617 million users at the time of recording. So it's growing fast and it's growing by about a million users a day currently. So why is everybody leaving do you think? I mean the certain orange based president. [00:03:16] Speaker C: Just got reelected, so I think that's basically. Well, I think the writing was on the wall for a little while. Ever since Elon Musk took over the whole just his attitude to leading that company has been pretty awful. I think like you say, people have been looking into other options. But yeah, I think his support of Trump was kind of the nail in the coffin. [00:03:46] Speaker A: I have noticed. Well, as long term Twitter users as part of the show it has been getting further and further writer wing probably is the way to describe it. And posts have been getting less and less traction and engagement and interaction, unless you're going for the whole rage bait basically is the only way I can describe it. That seems to be the only way you can get traction on said social media. I think it has influenced probably the election a lot more than people thought about how social media is controlled over in states. And Keith, you've been long advocate of getting off X, I think. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I joined Blue sky quite a while back when it was invitation only and it was. I think the problem with Twitter was is that when it first started. So I think I've been Twitter with Twitter since very early on. It was great. I think what's happened is when you first joined it, you were just kind of following the people you were interested in. So obviously I was following filmmakers and comic guys and people like that. So that was quite good. And there was a lot of backwards and forwards, engagement, people talking to each other. It was very conversational in a way. But I think even before Elon took over there was definitely a moving all social media for it to become a commerce sales based platform. It was pushing certain things and when they started doing it with algorithm based things so your feed was getting becoming less and less a chronological list of the things that people you were interested in telling you what was going on. The more difficult it became, you were kind of scrolling through lots of irrelevant stuff. Bluesco is a little bit more kind of like the original Twitter where it's more kind of chronologically based. There is still a certain element of algorithm into it. And I think Instagram again was another one that suffered when they changed their Algorithm and you were just getting a bunch of like random stuff that you kind of were. I'm not really interested in this. So my engagement with it has become less because I'm kind of like, I'm spending too much time trying to find the content I want. Twitter was again, I would not see things that Lee posted or you posted unless I specifically went. Even if it was in my. Your following feed. It's like, well, I don't see this content. It's like, where was it? And I know it's a few hours ago, so I kind of started to get a bit disenfranchised with social media entirely. And I think as events in the past few months have unfolded, I think people have really just decided, no, we kind of want to go back to where we were, where it's. Yeah, you get. People accuse people of going. You're in a social bubble and you kind of go, well, yeah, kind of. I don't mind that because this isn't really about. Mostly not about these big global things that, you know, the kind of important stuff, because I can get that from other places. My social media was about finding out what my favorite comic writers were doing, engaging with them, telling them that I like their stuff or whatever it is. And that's kind of what I want. I do want that kind of bubble element. So it's like, I know this is where I can go to get that information and news and content and, you know, people share stuff and talk about things that are interesting. [00:07:04] Speaker A: But do you think there's a danger now quite a lot of celebrities are hopping over to Blue sky that it's going to go back to that kind of same. The brands are going to now shift and everybody's going to start turning into this. [00:07:16] Speaker B: I think if they don't run it as a push content platform and you only see the stuff that you're interested in and you make the decision to follow the big celebrities or whatever it is, then that's fine. If I've chosen to follow a big celebrity, then I'll expect to see that content or if I follow a brand, I'll expect to see that content. But otherwise I don't. I don't think it's a bad idea for people to move. It depends what bluesky does as a platform. It went down for a few hours this week because of the sudden influx of people that were coming across onto it. But it's down to the decisions that the creators and the people make as time goes on. [00:08:02] Speaker A: It's quite interesting because Jack Dorsey who was one of the original creators of Twitter, joined the board of Blue Sky a couple of years ago, I think about February 2022. And he's recently left and then apparently going back to Twitter as a kind of it's not decentralized, it's not kind of thing because they're basically does feel a little bit like they're trying to recreate Twitter, as you said of about 10 years ago, that kind of nice period of Twitter when everybody liked it. Well, it's just interesting that he seems to have gone back because I think it's basically because it's going back to the recentralization because it was a bit like Mastodon, if you remember Mastodon. When that first started, you had to go and pick a server you wanted to pay or you could self host and then you could move over and then there's lots of decentralization. So it wasn't using just giant servers in a big cloud infrastructure place like Twitter or Facebook or all those Instagram users going onto Facebook though, is Facebook completely unusable for everybody else? Because Now I see one post from somebody I know and then 15 adverts and then another post from somebody you know, and I've just completely given up trying to use Facebook as a means keeping in touch. [00:09:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I barely use Facebook anymore, to be honest. I've not been hugely active on any social media for a little while. But I have been trying to engage a little bit more with bluesky. But yeah, Facebook just feels like, you say none of the posts that I see are from people that I'm particularly interested in hearing about, apart from my brother who seems to be the one person who I know who does still regularly post to Facebook. And yeah, if he wasn't on there, I probably wouldn't be looking on there at all. [00:10:00] Speaker A: I think it has just turned into the equivalent of just shouting into the void Facebook. Because yeah, I'll see the occasional, I said two or three posts buried up in 15 different videos and viral pranksters and those kind of things. And it's like. Or a video that runs for five minutes with 10 seconds of content at the very end. [00:10:21] Speaker B: I think Facebook has suffered because of the fact that it's merged with so many other services. So Facebook, Instagram and threads are kind. [00:10:31] Speaker A: Of interlinked and WhatsApp. Yeah. [00:10:33] Speaker B: And so once Instagram has started to go with that kind of push content where it's mostly either an ad or suggested thing, I think Facebook should just be what it was originally. And again, and this is my philosophy on Any of these social medias is I see the things I've chosen to. [00:10:53] Speaker A: See and don't mind the occasional ad. [00:10:57] Speaker B: Well, put it in a sidebar on the on the web browser so it's on the side like advertising is on most other websites. It's something you can scroll past and you don't do it. Or one of the great things about using a Mac web browser is I can switch to a reader view, particularly for web pages. So content, it doesn't really work for social media, but it strips away everything. And I can just read the content and I can focus on that and I'm not interrupted by ads and whatever it is. But I think that's the service that everybody really wants is I get what I've chosen to see. And if that's a random bunch of comic weirdos posting their latest, they call them doodles. But it's like, that's not a doodle. That's a fully fledged piece of art. Don't, don't do it. And that's what, that's what we all want. We just want to kind of have the content we want. And so Facebook should be friends and family type stuff. That's kind of where that established is the more intimate relationships that we have with people. So it's more about kind of family sharing stuff and then other stuff like blue sky or whatever should be the expanded world of creators and celebrities and whatever it is. I think services need to stay in the lane, but everybody's fighting for a chunk of that. Either the commercial side of things making money or the audience. And it's so saturated. It's the same with all of the kind of streaming services. There's so many. What do people do? You know, it's difficult for us as a thing. Geeky brummies like, well, where is our audience now? Do we post to Twitter? Do we post a blue sky? Do we post the threads? Do we post to Instagram? And it's a lot of work to saturate all of these things in the hope of reaching the people that would be interested in your content. And it's kind of like, well, having one platform and we know that's where the people who are looking for this content go to would be much better. [00:12:52] Speaker A: And then if I think back, well, eight years ago when we started, it was kind of, we made a conscious choice to choose Twitter because that was kind of the easiest way to get reach and get out and get growth. Because even back then, Facebook was kind of on a down curve. And Instagram, we did audio based content. So it was very hard to put visual content out for audio. [00:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:13] Speaker A: But it's just weird that bluesky is an actual Twitter byproduct which now seems to be overtaking X quite considerably. And I wouldn't be surprised if a big chunk of the audience moves over because X just seems to be Truth Social version two now. [00:13:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I had a little look on it yesterday just to sort of see what I could see and what would come up in preparation for this conversation. And one of the posts I saw was George Takei saying he's going over to Blue Sky. And all the comments under the post were, oh well, enjoy your social bubble, we won't miss you here. And just really kind of awful toxic kind of attitude. And you just read it and think, well, that's exactly why he's going over. [00:14:02] Speaker A: Well, that was the other thing as well is Twitter. I think they swapped to allowing adult content a few months ago and a lot of people have said adult content just pops up randomly on the timeline or you search your trending hashtag and you'll get served a video that you probably won't want to see. [00:14:18] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's a sort of. It's interesting how it's kind of tied into the debate around free speech, particularly in America as well, and hate to bring it back to Trump. But obviously Twitter free Elon Musk banned him because he was writing awful stuff about people and basically using the presidential accounts to be a cyber bully. Yeah. And yeah, and then he started Truth Social. Elon Musk got involved and let Trump back on X even though he doesn't really use it so much anymore. But it's sort of, it's the whole debate around to what extent is free speech just the ability to say what you want and to what extent should it be policed for? [00:15:10] Speaker A: Yeah, well, if I remember correctly, when he said he was took it over, he originally said he was going to take no sides politically and it was going to be a free speech platform without restriction was his original thing when he decided to buy it. [00:15:23] Speaker C: Okay. [00:15:24] Speaker A: But yeah, I mean I think I would, I would hope and expect a 90% of our audience is probably already migrated or migrating away. And that's the other thing I've noticed as well. It's really easy to find people in your local area and find people who are going to actually genuinely enjoy your content on BlueSkoy. And there's an opportunity to create like groups and lists and specialized feeds looking at certain things rather than relying on hashtags. I mean, I think hashtags as a concept is dying Instagram. I've just recently said that you can't follow hashtags from next month onwards. It's, it's going to be a. They're getting rid of them to a certain extent. [00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's useful if you've, if you're not. If you're not sure where to look for content. But I think I quite like some of the ideas that some bluesky got there, like starter pack things so people can put lists together of. Because there was something similar on Twitter. But yeah, didn't really make much use of that. But I like seeing these starter pack things so you can go, oh, there's some interesting people that I didn't realize were on Blue Sky. And I think the big issue a lot of people have got now is finding people again and rebuilding that audience. Because people have spent the past 10 years or more building lists of people they follow on social media platforms. So when you have to start again, it's that kind of like. Well, is, is that growth gonna happen? You know, you see it with YouTube as well. Yeah, kind of like it's very difficult now for new channels to build an audience because they're just not getting seen by other people. Because the algorithm is God in terms of like this. It's like that. It's pushing the content that the service provider wants people to see because it gets clicks, it gets that kind of stuff. And I think it's a model that doesn't really work as well for what would be termed social media in terms of that. It's kind of like people will say, oh, there's other things like Discord or Reddit or whatever, these things, but they're slightly different services in a way that kind of don't. [00:17:28] Speaker A: Discord is basically just chat bot for gamer, isn't it really? It's more. You'd go on there and post in your streams. And then as I said, Reddit has become more and more corporatized last few years. I was a big user Reddit round about 2008, 2009, when it was in its heyday and it was again the best face in the world to find niche information. So if you wanted to particularly research a subject, there'd be a subreddit for it and you can go in and think they're a mine. But again, that's just turned into a content form. It's just turned into the same hundred and fifty creators you'll see on Facebook and Twitter constantly just churning out Memes and reposting other people's content. That's the other thing I've noticed about bluesky is most of the content seems to be original. It's not. Somebody's ripped a scene out of a video game and slapped a logo and repost it to their channel. It's genuine content. It's genuine. Trying to make stuff better. [00:18:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I still. I just don't think we're going to get the new Twitter. [00:18:27] Speaker A: No. [00:18:28] Speaker B: Because other services have come and gone and failed. [00:18:31] Speaker A: Threads was massive for, what was it, three weeks, everybody moved threads and then just went. [00:18:36] Speaker B: Because I just had a look to see what it was. The other service that came around at the same time as Mastodon that I did join it was Hive Hive. [00:18:42] Speaker A: That was it. [00:18:43] Speaker B: And I kind of had a quick look. I've deleted that app since because it was just, this is too much. I can't do it. And again, it's like there's a mass exodus to Blue Sky. But again, is that going to become overwhelming at a point that you just go, oh, this is just. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Well, is it going to be another threads where. Well, it's fracturing the Twitter user base. That was the whole point of Twitter, was everybody was on there, wasn't it? And you could follow and you could find everybody. There was that first kind of weird way you could have genuine content and genuine interaction with people that you liked. Like you said with comic book book creators, you could go and interact with movie stars. I mean, Stephen Fry, back in the day, when he was not as crazy as he is now, you could have genuine interactions with him. It was a way for people to reach. Reach that audience. Is it going to be the same on Blue Sky? I think a lot of Hollywood celebrities are moving over very quickly by the look of it, especially maybe the more the left side of politics over there. [00:19:38] Speaker B: I think the difference we've got now is, is back in the original days of Twitter, it was possibly being done by the people themselves, whereas now it will be managed by a social media team. So there'll be the illusion of engaging with your favorite celebrities, but it's actually probably just going to be some other people on their staff, isn't it? [00:20:00] Speaker A: As well? It's like you'll see, like the Wendy's account and everybody tries to replicate that one. But I noticed I made a recent change to Blue sky, where you can now change your apps rather than having the Blue sky social to your website. So if you're on a website, you can change it to that. So I'm Assuming that's for brand friendliness. [00:20:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I do find that a bit tricky when I. Because when I did, I've done moved most of the comics related stuff now to Blue sky and Threads. And the thing with Blue sky that does mean nothing is that you try to tag the creators in because obviously you want, you want, you want them to know that you appreciate their work and you kind of want to say like, this is great, I'm recommending these people, but when you start putting all their names in, you go, I've got no room to put all. I can't credit you all because all of your social media tags are like 27, 8, 20, 30 characters long. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, read this book by and I'll run out of space now. But it would be nice that you could kind of shorten the way within bluesky, you type it in and it kind of condenses it to either their username, the screen name that you see, that would be quite useful within bluesky. Obviously outside of bluesky you need the whole thing, but within it, it just does the old. Just gives you a little bit more room to kind of say stuff which would be quite useful. [00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Also, I wanted to give a bit of a shout to Dazright. I think he's [email protected] on Bluesky because he's put together a Birmingham starter pack which is great for us to follow people in the local area and we're part of that list as well. So if you want to go and follow us and loads of people in Birmingham on Blue sky and geeky goings on, which is also moving over from Twitter, you can find us all on that list that Daz has put together. Cool. But I don't know, it feels. It feels almost like a breath of relief and it's like. Almost like PTSD getting off Twitter that you're not constantly assaulted with certain viewpoints and it's just. It just turned into something which I felt very toxic towards the end. It's quite annoying because I've had that account for. Since 2008. I think I have my Fotor account. It's a lot, lots of time to be like having one. Like having an old email address like a Yahoo or a Hotmail. And it's one of those things that after a while it's like, how often am I still going to invest in that? Am I, Am I done? I don't know how you both feel about it. [00:22:18] Speaker C: Yeah. As I say, I've not been using it that much for a while. So it's not. I don't feel like I'm particularly going to miss it. And I think part of the reason that I sort of slowed down on it was because I had just followed so many people that I've got a vague interest in that it ended up being like a lot of the accounts, even though I was following them, were sort of stuff that I wasn't that interested in and it just got quite tiresome to scroll through that much stuff. So I think moving to something new and having the opportunity to kind of have a clear filter that down a bit, yeah, is quite nice. [00:22:59] Speaker A: And how about yourself, Keith? I know a lot of comic creators already moved over to Blue Sky. [00:23:04] Speaker B: I mean there was a, there was a period where they, a lot of people, particularly artists, had moved over to another service called Cara, which was supposed to be art based stuff. And I kind of joined that and didn't really. I wasn't going to it and looking to it. I'd kind of stop. I've stopped a little bit more kind of posting myself to social media platforms, you know, obviously because my individual personal life isn't particularly that interesting. So who wants to read about that kind of stuff? But again, I kind of, I think I'm going to stick with Twitter as just an account that I look at occasionally maybe to pick up the odd if a creator's knocked out a Kickstarter and they haven't moved to another thing. And I'll kind of have a look but I'll just briefly scroll once every couple of days just to see is there anything interesting there. But most of it now is the kind of geeky bummy related stuff because that, it's a way to engage with some interesting people and kind of like, you know, I have a reason for doing that rather than doing it myself. It's kind of like, well, I'm doing it as part of the geeky bummy thing and it's quite nice and we get some relatively decent engagement with that and people are kind of quite complimentary about us or nice about the fact that we've recommended some of their stories or books or whatever it is. But I think I'm kind of slowly falling out of love with social media as a whole. [00:24:28] Speaker A: It's not social media anymore. This is the problem with social media. It is no longer social. It's more about being served content by promoted brands and promoted persons. That social aspect has gone. Facebook's dead to me personally. Instagram's good to pop on occasionally and Just have a scroll through. But again, that was more about visuals and about art and it was about photography at the time. And now that's just turned to. Here's more content. We'll show you some reels. Well, here's a cat falling out off a bed. Here's a dog running on a skateboard. That's what it's turned into. [00:25:04] Speaker B: I think it's difficult really for any of any social media platform now because obviously the costs of running a platform has to be recouped in some way. And to keep that service free to the end user. [00:25:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:18] Speaker B: How are you. How are you going to do that? You've got to commercialize it in some way. And I think that's the. That's the problem that all of these services will have going forwards is that they've got to make some money somehow. And the people with the money are probably the least nice people that you actually want on your services. [00:25:34] Speaker A: And I wouldn't mind paying a small sum towards bluesky per month, per se. I would never give Elon Musk a penny of my money, but I wouldn't mind investing in something which I felt there's a benefit for and something where, as you said, it's not constant ad servicing. So if you think about streaming services now, so think about many years ago when it was Netflix and just Amazon prime, fixed monthly fee, no advertising, nothing like that. It was just, you pay your way, you get your content. And now Amazon prime, the basic version has adverts in, Netflix, the basic version has adverts in. So you're instantly back into this realm of even though you're paying for the service to remove the adverts, you're still getting advertised, you're still getting content shoved in your face. [00:26:21] Speaker B: It kind of moves on to that kind of some creators moving to a completely different model. Patreon's been knocking around for quite some time and that was a way of people having paid content. It was almost like getting what you used to get free on a website, on a blog site. People would post up on a blog site, you'd go and read it. And again, blogs, a lot of blogs now are just advertising more than anything else. So Patreon was a way of people saying, like, pay for Patreon every month, you'll get such and such. And then there was a big shift, possibly a year, year and a half ago, particularly amongst the kind of comics creators and writers that I was following. Move to Substack. [00:26:58] Speaker A: Yes. [00:26:59] Speaker B: Which again was another kind of basically journaling, subscription blog thing and you kind of like you'd get it. You might get a little bit of content free if you wanted to read more. I mean, one of the big ones that I kind of follow is Pat Mills, who's been doing a kind of all of his major stories. An in depth dive into the creation and the ideas behind that and you get a little bit free. Otherwise it's like, you know, subscribe to the sub stack and you get all of the. Yeah, the full posts and stuff. So I think that's a. I think that's a nicer way for creators to get directly. You know, it's not dissimilar to what people are doing on Twitch or whatever it is where, you know, people are almost directly contributing to the creators they like rather than contributing to a wider. [00:27:45] Speaker A: Yeah, mine. Stuff like that. Where I get frustrated is stuff like Kickstarter now. And you see people like Philips launching a projector on Kickstarter and it's like, you have enough money, you don't need to be doing a Kickstarter for this. You are a brand already. Hasbro Labs infuriates me. [00:28:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:01] Speaker A: Where they'll have to have what, 50,000 people buy a certain toy before they'll release it to the public. [00:28:06] Speaker B: But then you get into the issues of like, when that happens, it's just all the people with money at that time buy it all up and then it just all ends up on ebay. [00:28:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:15] Speaker B: Straight after it's been released at double the price. So it's not a great. It's not a great model. Boom. Studios caught a lot of flack for it a couple of years back when they did a Kickstarter for the Berserker series, which was the one with Keanu Reeves writing. [00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:30] Speaker B: And doing that as a Kickstarter. And a lot of people were like, yeah, you're a kind of major publisher. Do you really need to be taking away from the kind of like people who are just doing this. [00:28:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:39] Speaker B: And they haven't got a distribution model that they can get this content out there anywhere, any other way. And it's kind of like, you know, it's a bit of a shame. [00:28:47] Speaker A: Is it thought bubbles on this weekend? [00:28:49] Speaker B: Which is thought bubbles on. Yeah. As we're recording at the moment. So yeah, lots of movies are there. [00:28:53] Speaker A: And that's the best place to go and find any comics. So if you're here next year, go somewhere like Thought Bubble. [00:28:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:28:59] Speaker B: Well, whenever you have any of these kind of comic conventions, there's always the creators villages or whatever version of that is. And you just go around and people are selling their content. That's probably a good way of getting that. [00:29:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And usually the best place we find when you go somewhere like mcm, which is back in next month, is the artist alley is the actual, the hive of the center of it. That's where people go and they interact and they go and see new creators and they go, oh, I really like this. And then they get some influence rather than just the 600th Funko Pop for their collection. [00:29:31] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I'd just kind of say really if you are in a social media platform or go to geocities. Yeah. If you, if you're on it, be on it. [00:29:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:42] Speaker B: Because you love it and you want to engage and you want to be positive about stuff and like follow the people that you like. I don't understand this idea of people like hate following or hate watching. It's like, don't do it. Life's too short. If people start doing stuff and you don't like it, just unfollow it, get rid of it, don't even bother viewing it. But if you are following it and you do like it, respond and go, I love this. This was great. [00:30:06] Speaker A: Yeah. If you don't like it, connect. [00:30:08] Speaker B: If you don't like it, just go elsewhere. Find something else you do love and you do enjoy and you want to, you know, positively engaged with. [00:30:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Go and use it for the purpose which was designed for, which is to go and connect to other people in a social interaction. Don't be parasocial, don't be doom scrolling, don't be rotting or whatever the new terminology is. And I'm going to really try and do this going forward to start limiting to my social media. Half an hour a day max. Yeah, I think that's the killer is people just sit there mindlessly on it all day every day and it's just. It's not good. But yeah, if you are on social media, go follow us on Bluesky. Promise not to post too much apart from Wednesdays where Keith does this comic. [00:30:52] Speaker B: Round, which I'm limiting now to a much more streamlined thing, which is a shame sometimes when there's big weeks and there's lots of great comics. But I'm trying to be much more kind of like this is really the top stuff to read. [00:31:06] Speaker A: And of course you get Lee's Amazing Gaming Roundup and Sam's Amazing Film Roundup plus trailer of the week. [00:31:11] Speaker C: Yep. [00:31:13] Speaker A: Go check those out. So it's Big G's 70th birthday. I mean he doesn't need any candles on his cake because he is a giant lizard candle in his own right. I think he wouldn't blow anything out, it'd just blow everything up instead. [00:31:32] Speaker C: Lights the candles instead of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:31:35] Speaker A: But 33 films in Japan, four plus another film that everybody likes to forget about. So five Western films, lots of TV series, lots of spin offs. It's probably one of Japan's most successful exports as a character in terms, in. [00:31:56] Speaker B: Terms of global reach. Probably, yes, a lot. Not as niche as a lot of the other kind of stuff. [00:32:01] Speaker A: Really think of the only things probably more popular than any more hello Kitty and Pokemon probably. [00:32:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:10] Speaker A: But yeah, it's Big G's 70th birthday. I mean Keith, you're our well known Godzilla experts introducing as part of Square Eyes TV Festival a few weeks ago, three episodes of the well renowned Hanna Barbera 1978 series classic. [00:32:27] Speaker B: Much loved, loved TV series. [00:32:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what does Godzilla mean to you as a thing? It's like, why are you so connected with him as a brand? [00:32:37] Speaker B: I think it was just one of those things when I was kind of a child in the 70s, so I'm not as old as Godzilla himself, but it was just. I liked monster movies as a kid. I was kind of into the kind of like monster flicks. So kind of the Universal horror stuff, the kind of like the Ray Harryhausen bits and pieces, King Kong, all of that kind of stuff. So kind of during the summer in the UK we. Or during the year in the UK this is how old it is. On Saturday mornings there would be targeted TV for kids. So BBC had Swap Shop and ITV had Tis was and whatever it is. And they would run through the winter. [00:33:20] Speaker A: Filmed in Birmingham. [00:33:21] Speaker B: Filmed in Birmingham. Tis was Chris, Terrence, Ali, James, Bob, Carol G's, all the classic names. All of you know all of these people. And then during the summer they'd stop doing that, doing the live shows and they would fill that with random content from across the world. So occasionally you'd have terribly dubbed European TV shows or films, one of which was the Flashing Blade, which I loved. If you've never seen the Flashing Blade, go and find it. It's awesome. Got one of the best theme tunes to a TV show ever. Is fantastic. And they would show films. This is going to sound terrible. So some of these would be Will Hay comedies. That's how old I am, kids. Will Hay, go and look him up. And then one Saturday this, it was a color one Godzilla movie came up. I was probably Seven or eight at the time. And it was from the show are of Godzilla. So it was probably at that point a good 10 years or so old, if not a little bit more. And it was like, this is fantastic. It's monsters. It's. I mean. And it obviously was dubbed at that point. And it didn't really bother me at that point when I was that young. It was just like, here's a massive monster who has atomic breath and stomps on things and fights monsters. And I just absolutely, just loved it. I don't know what it was. I was into comics and stuff and then things like that. And it was like. So I'd be like, oh, come on, I need another Godzilla movie. And at that point, there was enough that over the years I'd see four or five Godzilla movies and whatever it is. And it was just one. One of the highlights of the summer holidays was a Godzilla movie being on BBC. And it was like, oh, yeah, this is, you know, Son of Godzilla or Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters or whatever it was. So I think it was quite a long time before I actually saw the 54 version of Godzilla, which would have been the American issue, which was the one that had got Raymond Burr in which. God, man, this makes me sound so old. Who I knew as a character called. I think it was Ironside. It was one of these. It was a random. He was a. He was a kind of lawyer or something in a wheelchair. It was a popular BBC series. This is what you get when you have, like, three channels, kids. You watch literally anything. And so I'd seen that. And again, that was kind of interesting. But it was. It was just something about the kind of. The whole man in a suit aesthetic was just kind of one of these things that I just. Like this. This is simple but effective. And the miniatures and all the rest of it. And I was fascinated with the whole kind of, like, how they made these things. So it ignited that passion in me for all of the special effects kind of stuff. [00:35:53] Speaker A: So is that going to Ultraman? [00:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah, Ultraman. And then when things like, you know, obviously when Star wars hit, it was all, like, making the model. So I was always fascinated in seeing how these things were made and all the rest of it and kind of, like how stuff was done by, like, changing the speed of the footage so it had more weight and stuff. So, like, slowing things down or speeding things up had this impact on how, you know, explosions. And then obviously there was all the other stuff around it. So the kind of super marination stuff, the Gerry Anderson things. So it was all part of this kind of explosion of just incredibly well made, incredibly great, exciting stuff with creatures and monsters and spaceships and all the rest of it. And it's kind of. It's a thing that's just stuck with me forever really. And the Godzilla movies have obviously gone through eras. So I think at that point the Showa era had ended in about 1975. So it was a good few years before we got another Godzilla. So the Hanna Barbera cartoon we didn't get until the beginning of the 80s in the UK, but that kind of filled in a bit of a gap. Although we got Kazuki with it. So that's. We'll park that there. [00:37:00] Speaker A: I mean, I'd go Godzuki over mini Zilla, to be fair. [00:37:03] Speaker B: Oh, come on. No. Okay, everybody has their favorites. But. So again, the. The hens he say era started in kind of the mid-80s, which kind of beefed up the Godzilla made it a little bit more kind of like. Yeah, not. Some people would say that the shower era got sillier as it went on. It got more ridiculous and a bit. [00:37:27] Speaker A: If you look at Godzilla when he was first in which he was just an elemental force of nature. And it was a very much a tale about atomic weapon usage and Japan coming out of that post war slump. And how do. How do we. [00:37:41] Speaker B: It was a country. It was a country dealing with the trauma of what had happened to it towards the end of the Second World War, really. [00:37:46] Speaker A: But then by the end of it, Godzilla's a good guy with big shiny round eyes and he's got loads of friends that come out and like team up and like him and Mothra are like high five to take down Mecha King Ghidorah and all those. And they dance, you know, and it's all like the run up. And I think everybody seen that cliff where you got Godzilla sliding on his tail, doing a two footed tackle and it's all those kind of things and you got Jet Jaguar and I can understand from a kid's point of view, that's fascinating. But to have such a change in tone from that first movie where Godzilla just wrecks stuff to now he's humanity's friend. And that's what, 19 8, 78 cartoon leads quite a lot on. So I assume that was probably a bit of a reset with the Heise era, which was kind of. Well, we'll get back Godzilla. What he actually is, which is this big beast of a thing. [00:38:33] Speaker B: Yeah. But he goes through cycles of that. So in the. There's Quite a few comics. Yeah, with Godzilla. And he kind of. At the time when Toho weren't doing films, they licensed that character out. So the cartoon was made. And Marvel did a series of comic books where Godzilla interacts with Fantastic Four and the Avengers and stuff. It's just been collected in omnibus edition kids, if you want to get it. And so he goes through these cycles of being monstrous to being a protector of the earth. And I think in some ways it reflects the social need at the time. So obviously in the early 50s, post war, it a scary time. And then as time got on, people got concerned about environmental concerns and stuff like that. So Godzilla becomes a symbol for the protection of the planet and whatever it is. And he goes through that cycle. In some of the books at the moment that IDW put out, he's an environmental protector. And the kids that he engages with are kids who are interested in, like, saving the planet and all the rest of it. So he's symbolic of various. He's a. He's a. He's a. He's an elemental for force. And I think in much the same way the planet reacts to stuff. Yeah, Godzilla reacts to the needs of the world. At the time, I was going to. [00:39:52] Speaker A: Say it's kind of the. Well, not Captain Planety, but it's kind of. Godzilla is mother's nature's response to humanity's hubris and humanity's kind of lack of care for the world it's in. [00:40:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the Monarch stuff, the American stuff, kind of tries to run into that a little bit more. I still think the Americans don't really know what to do with Zilla, really. As the latest film that we had in the Monarch series was like, this is a King Kong movie, man. Come on. [00:40:20] Speaker C: It does feel like it's sort of just kind of speed run that evolution from elemental force to kind of cartoon character. Yeah, we'll do that over a few films because the first one. [00:40:34] Speaker A: Well, the first one's absolutely fantastic with what's his face, good old Walter White and. Yeah, Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor Johnson doing like that. That first film is just like shockingly powerful. [00:40:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very heavily based on the 54 version in terms of you don't really see Godzilla. [00:40:54] Speaker C: That's it. Yeah, it's sort of. You get the human element of this is this unstoppable force of nature that there's absolutely nothing you can do about it other than try and survive. And, yeah, all the kind of monster fight is just something cool happening in the background, which does work really well as a sort of plot device. Even though I know a lot of people at the time were complaining that where is Godzilla in this Godzilla film? [00:41:23] Speaker A: It's like Beetlejuice where he can only use for 15 minutes of footage. [00:41:28] Speaker C: But it's. So it works so much better than like you say the Godzilla X Kong, I think it was. [00:41:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:34] Speaker A: Where Kong's got a new power glove or something like that. [00:41:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Godzilla's had a makeover from blue to pink, glowing scales and. Yeah, it just felt a bit sort of Saturday morning cartoon with a bigger budget. [00:41:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:50] Speaker B: And it is, because the catering bill for Godzilla is massive. So you can't have him on set for very long, you know, because he just eats you out of house and home, really. [00:41:58] Speaker A: So we quickly go back, but Millennium era. So we had like 1999, which was after the not well received 1998 version of Godzilla. And I think he's still officially in the timeline. But he's a different kind of breed now, isn't it? [00:42:14] Speaker B: Yeah, he's a completely random element. There is. I think it's Godzilla Final wars, where it makes an appearance as a separate monster and he's dealt with in seconds by the. By the proper God. It's like, yeah, okay, forget it. Great sequence. You kind of go, oh, this is. [00:42:32] Speaker A: Just Zilla, isn't he? Or something. [00:42:34] Speaker B: It's just called Zilla. Yeah. In the. In the Toho verse. [00:42:37] Speaker C: Jumps in, sings a bit like a mirror choir. [00:42:38] Speaker A: And then I was going to say, because then we had Final wars, which was the end of that Millennium era. And then we had a significant break. I think lots of legendary stuff started. [00:42:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:48] Speaker A: But now we're back in the Reiwa era and Shin Godzilla. Well, recently, I mean, it seems to be a massive resurgence in Godzilla, probably to coincide with his birthday. But Shin Godzilla, which Hideki Anno, if you know him, he's done all the stuff with like all the Evangelion series. Did Shin Kamen Rider, he did Shin Ultraman. They're all kind of that weird universe who connected where you put Godzilla and Evangelion in the same universe. I don't know how that works. But then Godzilla minus one was such a big hit around the world. You think it just shows the relevance of the characters 70 years down the line and that it's still the same. Issues are constantly cropping up. [00:43:30] Speaker C: I think part of the success of that was, like you were saying about the earlier stuff, it's sort of using creative means to get that sort of sense of scale, rather than relying completely on throwing as much money into the CGI budget as possible. [00:43:46] Speaker A: Yes. If you look at that compared to the legendary pictures God's lyrics, you couldn't have two completely different ways of doing. [00:43:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:53] Speaker A: What is functionally the same character, similar kind of design. [00:43:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it was just more grounded in minus one, you know, Whereas most of the CGI sequences in Kong X Godzilla X Kong or whatever it is feel like animated sequences within a live action movie. [00:44:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:14] Speaker B: The. The placing of Godzilla in the minus one film feels like an unstoppable force where the populace is just can't do anything. [00:44:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:25] Speaker B: It's just here's this thing and we cannot do anything with it. And it, it was. I did think. I think when we talked about it at the time, just after it was released, it was. I think I said it was. It was a film that made Godzilla terrifying again. [00:44:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:39] Speaker B: It was like. It really felt like this is a scary monster. [00:44:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:45] Speaker B: Which. Which is something we haven't had for a while. [00:44:47] Speaker A: But I think Shin Godzilla did that as well. I mean, we were talking about it just before it was recorded with that kind of. You saw the evolution of Godzilla over multiple variants in that film. Rather than just going straight for he's the big G dude and he's just going to come and wreck a town. You've got those like weird, kind of hybridy, ugly protos. I don't know if that kind of. [00:45:08] Speaker B: Salamander Y type things. Yeah, yeah. But again, that was another thing where that the directors of that film or the writers. That film Godzilla was an allegory to talk about the frustrations with the governmental systems in Japan. [00:45:20] Speaker A: And like nothing gets. [00:45:22] Speaker B: You're ineffectual. It's like when something happens, this is going to be terrible for everybody because you don't know what you're doing. But again, it had some cool sequences. There's an extension of the Godzilla atomic breath sequence which is just spectacular because you don't see it coming in. You just go, oh my God, what just happened there? And it's a great film. If you haven't seen Shin Godzilla, it didn't do anything. It didn't do a theatrical release in the uk. I think it went straight to Blu Ray or whatever it is. [00:45:50] Speaker A: I think it was an Amazon prime streaming. [00:45:53] Speaker B: It might be on one of the streaming services now. So if you do get a chance to see Shin Godzilla, I do recommend. Recommend it. Oh, yeah, don't do the dubbed version though, because it's terrible. [00:46:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Big. Happy birthday to big G. Yeah. 70 years. [00:46:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Hopefully many more to come. [00:46:15] Speaker A: First, thank you very much for joining me. Tony Elving from the Wine Events Company. Can you introduce yourself? Who are you and where do you work normally? [00:46:23] Speaker D: Yeah, sure. So, wine events company. We're, we're an event a wine event specialist. It's a bit of a side hustle job for us. It's a hobby, it's a passion. And we started off just doing wine tasting events. When I left Hotel Divan to take up the reins at Touchwood Shopping center and to keep my hand in hospitality and keep talking about wine and remember what I'd learned from my sommelier qualifications, we just started like a little solly hole wine tasting club. And we used to, when I was at Hotel de Van, we used to pair wines with movies for the Electric Cinema. There was no one else daft enough to want to stand on stage in a cinema in front of 100 people and do a wine tasting. So I kind of took that with me when no one at HTV wanted to do it. And that's kind of just really grown arms and legs where kind of every couple of weeks we're doing, we're pairing wine with a different movie, which is like, it scratches so many itches for me in terms of like movies, my wine tasting passion and I guess showing off a bit as well. But yeah, the day job is Touchwood Shopping center in Solihull, which I love as well. But it's very different from this. [00:47:32] Speaker C: Awesome. [00:47:32] Speaker A: Thank you. Tell us more about the wine events company. So you told us how it started. What's kind of your regular kind of events that you do? [00:47:38] Speaker D: Yeah, so as I said, I mean, it really started off with just us doing wine tastings and wine dinners at first, wine pairing dinner. So where I've been at Hotel Divan, that was the, the bread and butter of the kind of the wine events that we do. And we did the odd movie with wine at the Electric, but we hosted dinners every month. And when I left Hotel Divan, there was lots of Birmingham restaurants said, oh, come and host a dinner with us. It would be great to collaborate, which is, which is good fun. But we really found a niche because lots of other people do that and, and we still love going to events like that ourselves. But I found a niche really with the movies pairing those who wine. And at first it was, you know, we were doing things like Sideways, you know, a movie about wine, for example, you know, really obvious pairings. But then we just thought, you know what, we can probably pair wine with anything. And so sometimes the Links are really tenuous. We did Bohemian Rhapsody with wine and literally the. The wines were paired after the names of the people in the band. And then Freddy loved drinking fizz, so we started off with a glass of fizz. We. We got more and more tenuous really. Christmas is dead easy. We do like the perfect wines for Christmas and then we do that with, you know, lots of classics, whether that's White Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life Love actually do those every year and we've had two that are a bit more quirky that have fallen into that rotation as well. We do every December now and that's Die Hard and Gremlins and that maybe tells a bit of a story about how we've gone with this sort of wine tasting where we've gone a bit wilder over the years. And you know, from audience feedback, I actually. We had a complaint, well, two on the same evening where people were so used to us, you know, dressing up and doing acting daft on stage. It's kind of Butlins meets wine tasting meets movies and where. Where I kind of deliver a wine tasting in character. And we did Midnight in Paris but I didn't dress up as anyone and someone said, oh, we had a lovely evening as usual. But why didn't you dress up, you know, a little bit disappointed. So. So that's it. We won't do it again without me putting something on. So, you know, when we do Bohemian Rhapsody wine, I've got Freddie Mercury's gear on. I don't keep the false teeth in for the whole thing because I can't talk or drink wine properly. But you know, we do Lord of the Rings with wine we've done a few times. We've only done fellowship so far and just the theatrical three hour version and that's, you know, I do that as Balam and Butterbur from the Prancing Pony and Gandalf transported us to the Electric or the Mockingbird or wherever it is and that's really good fun. You know, the team is a family affair actually. Like my wife is my business partner in the wine events company and she helps select the wines. She does all the logistics on the day. She looks after the wine pouring. So and the team. And then my daughter works with us and daughter's boyfriend, my. My sister in law and sort of friends from hospitality over the years as well. So, you know, if we're doing 220 people at the Crescent Theater, we've got a team of 10 of us. So it's all people we know and that we collect along the. Along the journey. [00:50:56] Speaker A: So what's your favorite film that you've ever screened with the Wine Events company, I feel like. [00:51:03] Speaker D: So we're always really excited about the next one, particularly one we've never done before. There's some that we love doing again and Lost Boys is probably the top of that list. You know, we, we have the whole audience, you know, screaming Michael and all the rest of it. Because of course, the word, the name Michael is, is called 143. No, 118 times in the movie. So we, so we, we kind of double that over the course of the evening, getting all the crowd to shout out Michael and all the rest of it. But I, I, you know, Die Hard is really good fun. I do that as John McLean's nephew, you know, you know, year. Years later. And then of course the theater or the cinema gets. Gets overrun by German terrorists after the panto money and, and. But he brings a German wine with him to show how civil he is, you know, sort of Hans Grover clone. So, yeah, it's. It's good fun. It's Mad Cap one that was a real childhood favorite film was Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. And we did that the Crescent last year. And that was such good fun. We're quite lucky. We're in a position now where maybe if people haven't even seen the film, they'll come along anyway. Certainly somewhere like the Crescent. We were certainly in that position at the Electric. And we're getting there at the Mockingbird where they think, well, I've not seen the film, but I know it's going to be good fun anyway, otherwise they wouldn't have chosen it. But we, you know, I was dressed up as someone from the luggage department. The Crescent had given us props. You know, Franken Kutztein comes out. One moment I'm running around as the Wolf Man. We got. I come out as Dracula. So, yeah, really good fun. And of course, Romanian wines, because we were in Transylvania as well. So, yeah, yeah, it was, yeah, good fun. [00:52:53] Speaker A: So what would be your ultimate Christmas movie? [00:52:56] Speaker D: So there's, there's a few movies that I've ended up watching only because people have recommended us to pair wine with them. And particularly looking at Christmas movies, which is kind of our most in demand time of the year. And I've got a real love for white Christmas Gremlins is amazing, you know, when we do that. And I think as a child that would have been right up there or. Well, it's up there now for me. But I've never seen White Christmas before, I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life and you know, I'd seen both those in the last six, seven years and I love both of them. But White Christmas has just got such a, an innocent charm and it just feels so festive. Even though of course we know Die Hard is the ultimate Christmas movie with, you know, 10 times as many Christmas songs, Christmas references, you know, decorations on the tree, all the rest of it. So. So. But yeah, I think White Christmas has got such a. A charm about it. A bygone era. It just gives me some lovely festive feels. Yeah. [00:53:58] Speaker A: So which film, which you haven't already shown, would you like to screen with a wine pairing? [00:54:04] Speaker D: Okay, so it's got to happen at some point and that would be. It will be a New Hope. The original Star Wars I'd really like to do and I'd like to different characters to be rep or different wines to be represented by different characters. So as I'm, as I'm getting when I first had this idea, I probably fancy myself as Han Solo. But as, as the years have passed, I'm thinking I'm probably Obi Wan Kenobi if I'm perfectly honest. But you know, that's not, that's not such a bad thing. And already I've got a spare bedroom which is like, you know, Mr. Ben and then the magic shop keeper appeared. That is our back bedroom which has got all the outfits that, that I wear for the different events and there is, there's a Jedi outfit waiting to be, waiting to be worn. And we tried doing the screen in Star wars before and because of the slate of Disney movies coming out, we've never been allowed to do it. It didn't work timing wise this year because they've freed up the release of some of the original trilogy again this year. So maybe missed out a bit there, but hopefully with no new movies about to appear anytime particularly soon, then that's one we could visit because I'd love to do that as my. Yeah, ultimate favorite movie of all time that I will have watched 10 times more than any other movie. [00:55:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:30] Speaker A: Probably the only pairing where you'd start with a dessert wine. [00:55:33] Speaker D: We have to start with something drying. But we're built up to that. So when we do Christmas, we finish on port, you know, because it's, we're choosing the perfect wines for Christmas day and we start with some fizz. And just like if you give someone something sweet and then give them something dry, it's, it can be a bit of a Disaster, but because it'll make it just taste so sour. But yeah. And, you know, it's interesting, you saying when we look at how we're going to do the wines, because we always have to follow that. That sort of. That path. And we need to stop the movie. X amount of time we're gonna have to stop the movie four times. Going to give you a drink when you sit down. We'll stop the movie four times to give you four more drinks and to top up your glass. And we have to really think about that balance. We need something for everybody. It'd probably be fizz, then a white, then a rose red. You know, it could be a poor or something, but traditionally not usually poor, so we saved that for Christmas. But it could be white fizz, white, white, red, red. Or, you know, it'll be something like that. But we. The boldest red is always going to be last, and the fizz is never going to be last unless it was a sweet fizz, for example, like, you know, a Moscato or something like that. So there's loads of stuff goes into it. We. Sometimes films are quite tough about when can you actually stop this movie? Because you kind of want a little bit of a cliffhanger. You want. Maybe there's a. There's a scene in White Christmas where Bing Crosby's raises the glass and says, well, I'll drink to that. You know, boom, pause. And everyone's like, oh, you know, corny. But, you know, that's all part of the fun, really. [00:57:07] Speaker A: Next question is about cinema snacks. So nacho yay or nacho nay in the cinema. [00:57:14] Speaker D: So is this whether I like them or whether I think people should be eating them and making that much noise in the cinema? [00:57:19] Speaker A: Whether people should be eating them and making that much noise in the cinema? [00:57:21] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm totally fine to eat them myself, but I would ban them for everybody else, is what I would say. No, I. For that. Yeah. I think popcorn's noisy enough. I think that should. That should suffice, probably. I love a nacho, but also the. The nachos in the cinema are not really as good as anywhere you could find immediately around the cinema, I'm sure as well. [00:57:42] Speaker A: So the plastic cheese always gets me. [00:57:46] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm gonna say nacho. No. [00:57:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:51] Speaker A: So what upcoming events have we got over the next few months? [00:57:55] Speaker D: So I mentioned it's a busy time. So we've put on. We've got a really special. There's a really special event for this personal to me, which is coming on the 29th of November. And it's a UK cinema premiere of a documentary called Song. So it's a little bit of a departure from what we normally do, but some follows the passage of four would be master Sommeliers. The master sommelier exam. The which is organized by the court of Master Sommeliers is the toughest exam on the planet. Don't worry about what the subject matter might be. Since 1969, only 279 people have passed the exam. And on the evening we're going to be joined by a master sommelier. We're going to watch the documentary, we're gonna stop the documentary to top you up with a wine very similar to what he's been drunk on the screen. And. And then at the end we're going to do half an hour Q A with the master sommelier and talk about some of the wines that Nigel selected to pair with the movie. So it's a little bit different, but it's going to be really special. And we do have some seats left for that. It's a. It's a. When you say it's a documentary, it sounds a bit dry. It's very sort of whimsical. It's absolutely fascinating. A master sommelier can blind taste a glass of wine and they can tell you what grape it's made from, likely what year, how old it is, what village and con, what country it was from and possibly even what village that that particular wine came from as well in France or Italy or Spain. And Nigel Wilkinson, who, who I did my advanced sommelier course with, he. He was the tutor, is a friend of mine and he's going to be. He's gonna be alongside me. So yeah, really special evening. It'll be good fun because Nigel and I are good mates. We'll have a good laugh along the way with it as well. But then beyond that we've put. We've got a second screening of White Christmas. Got It's Wonderful Life. We. We sold out the Crescent. So we've put that on at the. At the Mockingbird. Pretty sure Gremlins is sold out. Now we've got some spaces if somebody found fancies a night away at Chipping Norton for Die Hard. We've got seats left for Elf with wine which I've done this with cocktails before and it was amazing. It's going to be just as good with Elf. You can have a giant elf. I can't imagine who that will be pouring the perfect wines for Christmas and being very excited about it. So what I would say is if people want to jump onto our website, which is thewineventscompany.com that's it, dead simple. That's also our Instagram handle, the wine events company and on Facebook and X, where the wine events co. Or one word. But then looking ahead to January, we've got Merlot on the Orient Express in Litchfield, hosted not by me, but by her Kill Poirot, of course. We've got Reservoir Dogs, 25th of January in Digbirth, got Four Weddings and a Funeral. Next year, Dirty Dancing, a couple of cheesy ones, but we've got some. The stuff that we can do at the Mockingbird is the coolest stuff we can do. So the theaters, the out of town places, want us to do classics, you know, they want us to do Dirty Dancing, wants to do Mamma Mia. And they're great fun and we love doing them. But there's some opportunities to do something a bit more quirky when we go to the Mockingbird. So we did Terminator 2 with the greatest wines through space and time. We're doing Back to the Future this Friday where we're taking wines from the past. Marty McFly is going to bring them to the Mockingbird. People are going to decide whether these wines, like Matthias Rose, for example, deserves to stay in the future or whether it should be consigned to the past. So different funny things like that. And we're always open to suggestions as well. So if people like what we do, you know, give us some ideas and we'll, we'll put that on too. [01:01:57] Speaker A: And what's the best way to contact you if they do have ideas? [01:02:01] Speaker D: Through social media, Any of those channels on X, Insta, Facebook. Still feels weird to call Twitter X, doesn't it? But yeah, on any of those. And, or, or you. There's a contact form on the website. If you go onto our website, within about seven or eight seconds, you get a little pop up. We'll ask you if you want to input your email address and then we send you one email every month that tells you all the events we've got going on. All of our events are within one hour's commute from Birmingham. Most are in Birmingham city centre. Just because our day jobs and stuff, we're not doing any national tours. This is all about doing stuff close to home in the Midlands where we live. [01:02:39] Speaker B: So, yeah, goodbye. [01:02:42] Speaker D: Thank you. Cheers. [01:02:51] Speaker A: It's time for a occasionally regular feature that we do. [01:02:55] Speaker B: Just call it semi regular. [01:02:57] Speaker C: We've done at least one more this. [01:02:58] Speaker A: Year that Makes it regular, which is trailer talk. So basically we round up some of the stuff that's coming out either this year back into this year or next year. A few things which fall within our kind of geeky purview and stuff that we really like. And we've just picked out a random bunch this time. Some titles might surprise you though. We'll try and mix it up a little bit. But first one is the worst named film which has come out in the last 20 years. And I'm very angry at that. They've changed the name of this one, which is not Mission Impossible. Dead Reckoning Part two after Mission Impossible. Dead Reckoning Part one. No, it is now Mission Impossible, the Final Reckoning. Da da da da da da da da da. So directed and written by Christopher McQuarrie and written also by Eric Jenderson. Based on the original Missed impossible film from 1990. I think it was. [01:03:52] Speaker B: It might be a little bit later than that. Don't. It's kind of later. 90s. [01:03:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Starring of course, Mr. Tom Cruise, Haley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Si Morales, Pom Clementif, Angela Bassett. The final Mission Impossible film from what has been a very up and down franchise over the years. [01:04:14] Speaker B: Mostly. Yeah. [01:04:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:04:16] Speaker A: Most of the art, I'd say since Chris McQuarrinsey's got involved, it's definitely peaked back up again. But I'd say the Brad Bird movie wasn't. Probably was the turning point. One was great, two and three were films and then it's kind of re. Picked back up and now we've had this kind of singular story thread for quite a while now. But what do we think of the Final Reckoning? Do you think Tom Cruise is official now, too old to run like this? [01:04:41] Speaker B: Oh no, he's not past that yet. [01:04:45] Speaker C: Is very much still running in that trailer in several places. I think it looks great. It's very much a sort of teaser at the moment, isn't it? It's lots of action, very little dialogue, but the action looks as good as you would expect from a Mission Impossible. It's a bit like the Fast and Furious franchise in that they seem to try and escalate the stunt a little bit more each time. And this one seems to have him dangling off a biplane by the tips of his fingers, which. [01:05:17] Speaker A: Well, how do you top jumping a motorcycle off the. Off a mountain with a back with a parachute on which was then top him topping him doing a Halo jump for real. Real. So I think still some obvious CGI in there. At certain points. But I think for somebody who's been doing this for over 30 years, he's. [01:05:36] Speaker C: In his six 60s now. [01:05:38] Speaker A: It's doing well. [01:05:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:40] Speaker A: But I think it's nice that Vic Rhames has also kept going as well. And I'm sure he's very happy for the paycheck every few years. So I don't know what he's going to be doing post Mission Impossible because I don't think I've seen him in anything since. For a long while. [01:05:54] Speaker B: I think he's popped up in the occasional thing. [01:05:56] Speaker C: I've got a feeling he's done some. Was he like a voice in, I want to say one of the Kung Fu Panda films? [01:06:04] Speaker A: Possibly. [01:06:05] Speaker C: Possibly. Something along those lines, yeah. [01:06:08] Speaker A: But I mean it's. It's been a very fun ride since I said Mr. Chris McQuarrie came on. I can't remember what the name of the film was, where he joined. [01:06:17] Speaker C: I think that the names of the Mission Impossible films do sort of merge together a little bit from in my head. [01:06:24] Speaker A: But there's been these two and then there was the two or three before. [01:06:28] Speaker B: It was Fallout before these. [01:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:30] Speaker B: I can't remember if it was Rogue. [01:06:32] Speaker A: Rogue Nation. I think it was Rogue Nation where he took over Brad Bird Protocol as well. [01:06:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:06:38] Speaker A: Was Brad Bird, wasn't it? Ghost Protocol? [01:06:40] Speaker B: I think it's. It's one of. It's one of those. It's Ghost Protocol of Rogue Nation that it's changed over. [01:06:47] Speaker A: Yeah. But I think I really enjoyed this kind of resurgence in it. It's nice to have. Sounds weird. A movie franchise which actually follows on from the previous episode. It rather than jumping around or like having a 20 year gap. So like if you think about like the Planet of the Apes franchise, the moron reboot is. That's been all over the shop. It's like the first film and then it was two films together and then it was a couple of hundred years and then the fourth film and it's like kind of not really. It's. It's a universe. It's not really a shared thing. And probably the only comparative has probably been the MCU or up to end game. [01:07:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:07:31] Speaker A: It's kind of had a single narrative. I really enjoyed them. It's a fun trailer. It's. If you watch any of the Mission Impossible films or you've been that invested in it, you're probably gonna watch this one. And I don't think Mr. Cruz is gonna complain too much about IMAX releasing this time. I think the last one got kicked out by June 2, didn't it? Everybody complained a lot about that, I think, in the cinema release. But yeah, it's a good film. Really fun. Talking of the mcu, nice segue. Captain America, Brave New World. So this feels like the Winter Soldier did really well, didn't it, as a. As a movie. Shall we try and do that again with a different Captain America this time? [01:08:15] Speaker C: I'm all for that line of reasoning. It's. Yeah, yeah, they've definitely. They're pushing the sort of espionage kind of angle. [01:08:25] Speaker A: I think that's a good way to take it with Sam because we know he's not going to be as strong as Steve Rogers and he's not going to be doing the same kind of stunts. He's more acrobatic. He's more kind of a flippy guy. And after the Captain America Winter Soldier TV series didn't do possibly as well as hoped. I think this is kind of feels like a bit of a. Or you now actually can become Captain America and be steering the character yourself. [01:08:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I think they acknowledge it directly in the trailer, don't they? It's like you're not Steve Rogers. Well, I know, yeah. And I agree. It's like, say he's not got superpowers, he is his own character, but still has to adopt that kind of mantle. And I think it works well as a character drama, sort of. And it did. There was this in the Captain America and the Winter Soldier, but it's about him taking on that responsibility and the pressure that that puts on him. And, yeah, I think that should make for an interesting film. It's not just going to be lots of pixels bashing into each other. [01:09:40] Speaker A: Well, you got Giancarlo Esposito playing, I think, one of the main villains in it, Sidewinder, instant, kind of. Well, it's Giancarlo Esposito playing a villain. That's what he does. [01:09:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:09:51] Speaker A: And of course, Harrison Ford praying a president for what feels like the 600th time in his career so far as Thaddeus Ross. [01:10:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I think he's. I think he presidential candidate when the film starts. I mean, I think he's a bit of good casting to replace William Hurt with Harrison Ford, who just seems to be firing on all cylinders at the moment. [01:10:13] Speaker A: Seems to rather be all kind of late career resurgence, like, oh, Star Wars. All right, I'll do Indiana Jones. All right, I'll come into the mcu. [01:10:21] Speaker B: I do quite like as well. It's expanding on the Isaiah Bradley storyline. From Falcon and the Winter Soldier. [01:10:29] Speaker A: Yes. [01:10:30] Speaker B: But it's definitely called Falcon and the Winter Soldier. [01:10:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:10:33] Speaker B: Which is quite good. So I kind of. I'm looking forward to this. I do like this trailer because the way they use the typography and everything in there, the kind of, like, slightly off brand that it's going to be. And I don't mind that it's bringing back characters from the Incredible Hulk movie as well. [01:10:50] Speaker A: I was going to say bringing back Liv Tyler is kind of a really deep cut if you've not really paid attention. [01:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's quite a few. It's quite a few characters from that Incredible Hulk movie because I can't remember the name of the actor who plays Stern who becomes a character called the leader. Terrible spoilers for all of you out there. But again, that kind of plays into this. It's quite nice that Marvel kind of go, we're acknowledging everything that's gone ahead, and I think that's what they need to do a little bit more is kind of like, you know, everything's connected, but it doesn't have to be as. [01:11:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you go back to that phase one, Phase two era of you can have just a mention of it. It doesn't have to be such an Enterprise story. [01:11:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:11:32] Speaker B: And I quite like the whole idea of Captain America going against things, even if it's his own government, if he feels it's wrong. I think that's one of the defining principles of Captain America is although he has the word America in his name, that's not all that he's about. He's not a symbol of. America is a symbol of freedom and justice and whatever it is. So Captain America will fight for anybody. You know, it's why he becomes such a pivotal character in Endgame, why he's the kind of lead of enduries that he's fighting for the entire planet, not just randomization. [01:12:11] Speaker A: Whole thing with civil war, wasn't it about, you've got Tony Stark being very much, I'm going to toe the line. Toe the line, represent the government. And then you've got Steve Rogers going, this isn't the right thing to do, even though that's what we're being told to do. [01:12:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:12:25] Speaker C: It's a symbol of what America is meant to be a symbol of, rather than what it's actually necessarily doing. [01:12:30] Speaker B: Well, throughout his comics history, Captain America has always often been pitched as the rogue character. You know, he gives up the mantle of Captain America to become a character called Nomad in the various civil wars and secret wars. He becomes, you know, he's gone underground and worked with the street level heroes and stuff to kind of go against the kind of overarching conspiracy plots or whatever it is. So Captain America's a much more interesting character than I think a lot of people give him credit for. And I think Anthony Mackie, he's doing a great job as playing that Sam Wilson character. You know, it's really good. We get the kind of human version of Red Wing again where we see a couple of shots of him in the film. I think he got. I think that character was introduced in the TV series as well. [01:13:16] Speaker C: Yeah, he's like a Danny Ramirez. Yeah, yeah. [01:13:21] Speaker A: I think he's basically the new Falcon when Sam takes over the Captain America title. But yeah, it's Tim Blake Nelson. [01:13:28] Speaker B: Tim Blake Nelson. [01:13:29] Speaker C: That's it. [01:13:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:13:31] Speaker A: I knew that was going to annoy you for the rest of it. But what do you think about Thaddeus Ross Red Hulk storyline? [01:13:37] Speaker B: It's a big established part of the Hulk series. I think it could be working. It depends how. Again, with any of these things, it's going to come down to what the story that they tell and if they tell a good story, great. If it's just we needed another Hulk character, maybe not. But I'll reserve judgment on that until I actually see the reasons behind. Obviously, it doesn't look as if Thaddeus has done it to himself. He seems quite surprised when the transformation starts to take place. So it's what happens with that and which version of the Red Hawk character they take. He's got a certain history in the comics and it's whether Marvel play into that or whether they're going to twist it around. So it'll be interesting to see what goes on. [01:14:21] Speaker A: It's interesting to move on to our next trailer, which is Thunderbolts and how you wind up that Falcon movie and a Winter Soldier movie coming out pretty close together, which is. Well, Thunderbolts isn't just a Winter Soldier. So we've got pretty much a big chunk of the introduced characters from phase three, phase four in here. So we've got White Widow. We've got what's his face. Red Guardian. I don't remember his name. We've got Winter Soldier. Of course, we get our ex, Captain America, who. I can never remember the name of what character you've played in it. [01:14:55] Speaker B: Well, I think they were just referring to him by his real name, this, which is John Walker. Yeah, but in the comics he was also called us Agent. [01:15:02] Speaker A: That was. [01:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah, So I don't, I don't think they've officially named him that in the mcu. [01:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah, we've got Hannah John Kamen playing Ghost, which was in the second and then. Yeah, Taskmaster's back. Also from the Scarlet Widow movie. [01:15:18] Speaker C: Black Widow. [01:15:19] Speaker A: Yes. And Bob. Yep, Bob, which is obviously the most obvious character obviously ever. Who's going to turn up in the film. I'm not going to spoil it. [01:15:30] Speaker B: And I don't know what Marvel's fascination with the word, the name Bob is because there's a whole character in. I think it starts in the Deadpool comics. There's a Hydra Bob. It's like, what is it with Bob? What is with that name? [01:15:44] Speaker A: Isn't he based, like Hydro Bob, like become Deadpool sidekick? [01:15:47] Speaker B: Kind of like he's just like, oh man, I don't really want to be in this job, but come make ends meet, man. [01:15:53] Speaker A: So what do we think of Thunderbolts? Looks again, a bit of a caper movie. It's kind of now there's not the Avengers. This is kind of allowing to have those team ups and recognizable characters back in a bit of back in a kind of franchisee movie is the way I probably describe it. [01:16:11] Speaker C: Yeah, it's sort of Marvel does Suicide Squad kind of thing, isn't it? In a way. And yeah, it looks like they're having fun with it. [01:16:20] Speaker A: I think Julia Louis Dreyfus is having the time of her life. [01:16:24] Speaker C: I think my favorite bit of the trailer is where Winter Soldier sort of appears in this convoy. And having had this, his whole arc throughout the entire MCU has been about him sort of leaving the Winter Soldier mantle and becoming his own person, going back to being Bucky Barnes again. And as soon as he pops up, Red Guardian is just fangirling over him as the Winter Soldier. Oh, so cool. Yeah, it looks great. I think it's nice as well where to have an opportunity to have some of the sort of villains from other films that kind of got a bit underserved. [01:17:06] Speaker A: And yeah, I think Hannah, John Kamen's ghost character really got underserved in that movie. It's a fantastic character and she a fantastic actress. I really. Oh, I think Killjoys, if anybody used to watch Killjoys on Sci Fi Channel before it stopped making Sci Fi. Fantastic, absolute fantastic Sci Fi show. And she's amazing in it. So I recommend going back and watching that if you do get a chance to. [01:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it looks great because it's not taking itself too seriously. There'll obviously be a serious Element. And I think that kind of Guardians of the Galaxy feel to a movie where you can have levity but also be quite serious. It's quite good. I like. I'm becoming a huge fan of Wyatt Russell. Don't know why. He's just great. He was in the Monarch series and it's like. And there was a bit just his dad again. There was a great part in the Monarch series where they transitioned from his dad to him as an actual transition. And you just go, yeah, that's genius. And there's just something about him. And I think his character took a bit of a dark turn in the. Again. [01:18:08] Speaker A: Falcon. [01:18:08] Speaker B: Falcon and Winter Soldier. So it's quite nice to see him playing it a little bit more relaxed. The one part in the trailer that I want to see taken further going on is I want more adventures from the guinea pig that Yelena's walking away with. And I want. Is this the beginning of the kind of, like, Avenger Pets sequence? [01:18:28] Speaker A: What was that? Guinea pig superhero. G Force. Maybe this is the MCU GeForce crossover movie with. [01:18:35] Speaker B: They don't draw attention to it, but it's there. And I'm like, that has got to pay off somewhere else. There is no. There is no. There can be no possible way while that. That guinea pig is there. [01:18:43] Speaker A: Check on this. [01:18:44] Speaker B: Doesn't pay off somewhere. It's got to pay off on this. And I hope it leads us to a kind of whole series where we get all the kind of, like, super pets for the Marvel Universe. [01:18:54] Speaker A: I'm still saying, oh, yeah. I'm enjoying the fact that Florence Pugh's Russian accent is still as bad as it was in the Black Widow movie. It's like she's keeping it, but that's. [01:19:03] Speaker B: Part of the fun of it. And the Red Guardian as well just looks like, oh, man, you are just the coolest superhero ever. You just don't care. [01:19:11] Speaker A: It'd be nice to have a fun superhero movie. It's been a while since we had a fun superhero movie. [01:19:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:19:18] Speaker B: There's a whole bunch of Russian superheroes in the comics as well, which is quite good. And be good to see those. Come on. I mean, the thing is that I'm a bit concerned that the ending will take a very dark swerve if you have. If you. If you're a comics fan, there's elements within this that you kind of know. You're kind of thinking, are they going to go with this story? [01:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:38] Speaker B: And the whole kind of thing with the. With the. That we're alluding to with the Thunderbolts, we can't use that name and the asterisks and all the rest of it is are we going to have something that will just really swerve at the end? And I wonder how they will handle that. Yeah, you know, because they are kind of leaning into the levity elements in the trailer so far. And will it come as a shock to the audience when it goes. We are going in a completely different direction now. [01:20:02] Speaker A: Yeah. But Cards of the Galaxy did that to a certain extent with the final act of the third movie. That levity disappeared for quite a long time with that film. [01:20:12] Speaker C: That can be a really effective device is switching from one to the other. It just makes tragedy feel more tragedy. [01:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Really catch your audience on the. On the hoof. But I'm kind of looking forward. I've been looking forward to the Thunderbolts movie for a while. So I kind of think it could be. It could be great. And the quality of the actors in it, you know, you can't go wrong with that cast. [01:20:32] Speaker A: And then to finish off the MCU stuff, animated anthology series coming out in Christmas, the final series of what if. So season three. Interesting combination of stuff that's going through. So just whistle through a couple of the episodes. The Red Guardian themed EP episode with Bucky, a few other people in there. An anime inspired episode of the Avengers piloting mix against a horde of Mega Hulk monster monsters titled Go Avengers Heroes of the Gamma War, which I think really goes back to the 70s era of the MCU Japan crossover era. What's the other one? There's a musical number with actress of course, probably a bit late off the back of Agatha all along. And then we got Shang Chi and Kate Bishop in a western themed episode. So some very interesting ones. There's always going to be a subplot which will of course be interleaved all the way through with the Watchers and Jeffrey Wright. I mean, I felt season two wasn't the strongest season one of what if. So I'm hoping it kind of goes back up a little bit more. [01:21:42] Speaker C: Yeah, I do agree. I preferred season one. I think for me the joy of what if is the kind of creativity of we can do whatever we want with these characters and go off in a completely different direction with them. And it feels like a shame that they're very vocally saying this is the final season of it because I get why they feel the need to kind of tie them together. And I think that did work in season one in the sort of the last couple of Episodes kind of reintroducing that overarching storyline. But I think personally I would have preferred it if they'd just kind of left it open ended and let it be the anthology series it was meant to be. [01:22:35] Speaker A: I mean, that's the whole thing with the what if concept. You can do whatever you like with it. It's like the whole what if Ultron worm, that kind of thing. What if Ultron got hold of all the Infinity Stones. That was a fantastic episode because it was just a complete what could have happened. [01:22:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm kind of looking forward to it. I think I agree with you. The fact that they're kind of calling it a final season is a bit of a wasted opportunity. But again, perhaps that's because there's not enough content for a wider audience to get in with the whole what if. Because if you don't know the original bits, the what if thing becomes a bit irrelevant. It's like that was the interest in the comics. It was like what if Spider man was in the Fantastic Four? What if Wolverine didn't have an adult? So you. It was. It was a spin off in a story that you already know. So I could see that they could resurrect it in a few years time when there's more content available. So it could be, you know, those kind of things. I do like the fact that we're going to get some more Marvel zombie stuff, which is kind of like I want more of that Howard the Duck. Yeah, okay. [01:23:37] Speaker A: Well, take plenty of the galaxy anyway, to be fair, he'll be a full time member. [01:23:42] Speaker B: But again, I kind of like. It's interesting that the trailer lays heavily into the introduction of a particular character towards the end, which is great because it's voiced by the original actress who has portrayed this character for probably what, 30 years plus. So it's going to get kind of cool how they do that. I kind of like the idea of the western episode and whether that will mean that they will bring in. We will see Marvel have got western characters. I think it's. The Rawhide kid is a character that played quite heavily into. There was a recent. [01:24:16] Speaker A: I was thinking Jonah hex, but his DC is. [01:24:19] Speaker B: Jonah Hex is DC. The. I think it was the 85th anniversary of Marvel or whatever it is. There's been some recent celebrations where they've kind of like touched back on some of these older characters that they've got. So it'd be nice that if there was some kind of interaction with those characters to kind of come through I like, I don't mind that it's. There's a through line. Season two. The problem you got with that was that it was Peggy's adventure through the multiverse, which was a much better adventure through the multiverse than Dr. Strange had. [01:24:49] Speaker C: So let's pop that out. [01:24:50] Speaker A: I was gonna say, is Kahori's back in it? [01:24:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:53] Speaker A: And she seems to be pivotal because that was kind of how she was introduced midway through season two. And it was kind of. She. She became part, as you said, part of that Peggy kind of multiverse storyline. And she was there at the very end. And she seems to be an integral part of season three. [01:25:10] Speaker C: Her episode was the highlight of season two, I think. [01:25:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:13] Speaker C: So, yeah, all for that. [01:25:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:25:17] Speaker A: I think out of the three MCUs, which ones we're most looking forward to. Gotta pick a child, Keith. [01:25:27] Speaker B: No, I can't. [01:25:28] Speaker A: You gotta pick a child. [01:25:31] Speaker B: I'm four more. You know, they. They each serve a different purpose. [01:25:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:35] Speaker B: So I'm looking forward to my Christmas holiday. I liked it last year when they released them one a day in the run up to Christmas. That felt kind of special that it was like, okay, I get a new episode and whatever, lunch in them all at the same time. I'm not sure I'm in favor of that because people are going to be in German. It's going to be like the whole kind of like, you know, I'm sure. [01:25:54] Speaker A: Expecting people to be sat at home that weekend just going next, next, next, and changing all the series in one go is probably why they're doing it that way. [01:26:02] Speaker B: And I'm looking forward to Captain America and I'm looking forward to thunderbolts, exclamation mark. Hopefully there will be different things for different purposes and I'm gonna. [01:26:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:26:12] Speaker A: I mean, thunderbolts. Captain America does look like the perfect Valentine's movie. Moving swiftly along. So we're going to go to another franchise which has been out for some time now, which is John Wick, ballerina spin off movie starring Ana De Arma. A lot of repeat characters. Chad Stahelski is not direct. I don't think this one. It's Len Wiseman, who's better known for the Underworld franchise and Good Day to Die Hard, I think one of. One of the Die Hard movies, but this is kind of his. He's worked quite a lot on Loose for the TV series, so he's moved over to this one. And yeah, Anna De Arma, Angelica Houston, who we've seen popped up, Gabriel Burns in there, Lance reddicks reappears Ian McShane, Keanu Reeves, nor Norman Reedus. Interestingly, because I didn't really show you much in the trailer, but this is basically a bit of a. Between John Wick three and Chapter four. Ballerina assassin, Risk of Roma new great hope out to avenge her father's death. So we've had the. We had the spin off TV series on Amazon prime based in the Continental four John Wick movies. And now this is a kind of second kind of spin off with another movie it seems for a film probably being filmed quite some time back. Probably languished in post production hell. [01:27:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I think it was finished actually. Finished a couple of years ago. I think it was due for release before John Wick 4. And I don't know whether there was production issues or whatever it is or the various writer strikes or something pushed its development back. But you know, more John Wick based stuff. It's kind of cool. [01:27:59] Speaker A: More Kinu in a black suit. [01:28:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know how much we'll get of him. [01:28:03] Speaker A: I'm assuming he'll just be a bit of a cameo appearance because I'd like to see the mythos of why he's so feared and I know why he's so feared in his own movies. But it'd be nice to see the other assassins be afraid of him a little bit rather than just goons let he guns down whilst running a run up a staircase. [01:28:22] Speaker C: That's a good point. Yeah. There's obviously a lot of backstory to his character that they could be building films around. And it's kind of interesting that they're doing all these spin offs and not delving into that. But yeah, I will very happily watch anything that Ana de Armas does. I think she's been the highlight of most of the films that she's been in. [01:28:44] Speaker A: After that Marilyn Monroe movie, which she was fantastic in the rest, the film completely collapsed around her. [01:28:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:28:51] Speaker A: It'd be good for her to have a bit of a hit as a solo kind of lead for a change. [01:28:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:28:56] Speaker B: Which was great. In no Time to Die. [01:28:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And she was only in it for five minutes. [01:29:01] Speaker C: Spectacular. [01:29:02] Speaker B: More of that, please. Yeah, I think as long as it doesn't. My problem with the later John Wick films is it become. Became more and more ridiculous. I didn't. I loved two which expanded the mythos but didn't. Wasn't. John wasn't an unstoppable force, you know, that you felt there was a risk still to him as a character that you Know the idea of that over everybody, everybody, every assassin in the world coming after him. He thought, oh my God, this is going to be like whatever. By the fourth, it was kind of. [01:29:31] Speaker A: Like it was just him kicking off randos, wasn't it? [01:29:34] Speaker B: And you know, you would literally, you would literally became kind of the Mike Myers thing of an unstoppable force. And there wasn't that sense of jeopardy to him as a character. And that's why that, the ending of that film felt a little flat for me because it was like, I don't believe it. Yeah, it's like I don't, I don't feel like it was earned. But hopefully in this it will kind of balance that. Kind of like the mythos of the John Wick world, the whole interconnected continental thing. And the fact that like just the ability of these people is that you do a job well. You know, this plan you planned, you execute it. It was the great, that great sequence in the catacombs in John Wick 2 where you see him get his stuff, put it all out, he knows what he's doing, he goes in, does the thing, comes out and everything's pre planned. And it's not this just kind of random succession of like, isn't that a lucky coincidence? [01:30:34] Speaker A: Well, I love that scene in John Wick for, with him versus Scott Adkins, who's from Sun Caulfield by the way, which I always find very weird, where he's wearing that big fat suit as like the guy dealing the cards. Yeah, that fight with him in the nightclub that felt like that's John Wick. Not the scene in the Arc de Triomphe where kills people. 30 seconds later 15 more people turn up, that he kills all of them. And it's kind of that, that's what I want to see. Assassins versus Assassins. That's the whole point. And I think this is going to probably go much further into that kind of role of it because she's not going to be, as you said, an unstoppable force. She's not going to be this feared Baba Yaga. It's her cutting her teeth basically, as an assassin. [01:31:14] Speaker C: They make that point in the trailer, don't they? The person presumably training her sort of says there will be people bigger and stronger than you. You need to be smart, you need to cheat when you need to cheat and that sort of thing. [01:31:26] Speaker B: And I'm down for more female led kick ass movies. Yeah. Because some of the people who worked on John Wick did Atomic Blonde with. [01:31:36] Speaker A: Charles Theron very much in the same vein. [01:31:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And it feels, you know, and I don't think they get as much credit as they deserve, and. But again, much like Mission Impossible, it's another film that looks like it's pushing the need for the Oscars to get Oscars for stunt people, because, my God, you know, even in these trailers, she's thinking, this is, you know, acknowledge the work and the craft that is going into these films. [01:32:02] Speaker A: Yeah. It's nice to see Gabriel Birnbach as well. I don't think I've seen him in stuff for a fair while, although I. [01:32:08] Speaker B: Do still feel a little bit when I see Lance Riddick. [01:32:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:32:11] Speaker B: And it's like, oh, my God, it's been a while now. And even he keeps turning up in stuff. Vox machina voices, one of the characters in that. And you just think, man, I can't believe that this. And he's such a pivotal part of the John Wick world. [01:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:32:26] Speaker B: Which was, again, why for hurt me a little bit, because it was like, I understand. You didn't need to do that. [01:32:32] Speaker A: Yeah. But I understood why they had to do that. [01:32:34] Speaker B: You didn't need to. Yeah, it was a. It was a low blow. Yeah. [01:32:39] Speaker A: But, yeah, because we mentioned Lance Reddick, I have to shout this out. Corporate on Comedy Central is one of the greatest TV shows of all time. And he plays the world's best CEO in that. If you've not watched Corporate, go watch it. It's absolutely fantastic. And he. Steal scene. Steals every single second he is in there. Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic. But, yeah, more John Wick. It's a universe we've grown to kind of love. And the mythos has expanded out over the course of four films. So it's nice to have a little bit more of the same universe. And they're always fun films, regardless of what it is. Talking of another type of assassin, moving on quickly, the Amateur, which is B M's version of. So you've got Rami Malik, directed by James Hall, Starry Remy Malick, Rachel Brosnahan, John Berenthal, Julianne Nicholson. Lawrence Fishburne, of course, has to pop up in. Because any form of assassin now has to have. Lawrence Fishburne seems to be the new rule. Basically, a CIA cryptographer, his wife gets murdered, he goes on a bit of a rampage to get revenge. [01:33:53] Speaker C: The USP of it is that he's not an assassin. Yeah. No, he's completely useless at fighting or shooting and all that sort of thing. But he's very, very intelligent, and he uses that to pick off his targets. [01:34:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:10] Speaker C: And the director previously worked on Slow Horses, I believe, which is currently the main reason why I've not deleted my Apple TV subscription. [01:34:22] Speaker A: Gary Oldman seems to be loving that show. [01:34:25] Speaker C: Yes. But it's incredibly good spy drama and if he brings anything that he's learned from that into this, then I think it could be really, really something special. [01:34:36] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's based on a book by Robert Little, originally the character supposed to be played by Hugh Jackman. So Hugh Jackman to Rami Malek is. [01:34:43] Speaker C: A bit of a swerve given what. Yeah. What we're just saying about his character. I feel like Rami Malek is probably better cast. [01:34:51] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean it looks fun. Looks kind of. It feels. I had a real Enemy of the State vibe, if you remember that film with Will Smith and Gene Hackman back, kind of similar kind of vibe feel to that. And I suppose it's trying to ape the Jason Bourne movies a little bit of the non traditional assassin character. And then Jason Bourne just gets woken up and he's like. But yeah, it feels interesting take on the spy drama and interesting take on the whole assassin way of doing things. I mean, Keith, you don't look convinced. You're really not looking convinced. [01:35:32] Speaker B: No, I mean the first thought that came into my head when I watched this trailer was oh, yeah, this is Nerd Wick. So it's like instead of being an expert in gunplay and whatever it is, you're just smart and can use computers like swimming pools. I mean, that was another thing that I didn't like about this trailer, was like, oh, where's a cool location to do stuff that everybody's been talking about over the few years? And that was that ridiculous infinity pool between two places in Singapore. [01:35:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:35:57] Speaker B: Is that, is that really good? Is that really going to happen in that particular location? It's like, you know, who is this random gangster that's in that pool? [01:36:05] Speaker A: Of course you can just hire the entire top floor of that hotel for a private swim. [01:36:09] Speaker B: And I'm still struggling to get over the fact that the Rami Malik's best role is in Academy Award winning Remy Malik in Night at the Museum. And I'm like, I can't shake that. I can't shake that. Him. I mean, he was great Egyptian robot. [01:36:24] Speaker A: Come on. Now this feels like a bit of an evolution of Mr. Robot character. [01:36:28] Speaker B: It's basically Mr. Robot with extra bits, but it's kind of like, you know, don't cast Laura's fishburne as your kind of like he's done it in John Wick. He's done it in the Matrix. It's like just the. The only time that works is when it's with Keanu Reeves. Outside of that, it's like. So I don't. It smacks a little bit of the kind of like Fast and Furious y kind of movie. And it's gonna be okay, but it's gonna be a bit stupid. And you know you're gonna go, really, is this, is this gonna happen? [01:36:59] Speaker A: This feels very much like somebody's gone for the cupboard of what option rights they've optioned a long time ago and went, well, this is popular at the minute. Let's make it. And then just like pulled a script together and over and threw it out. Who can we get who's not busy at the moment? You'll do. You finished playing Freddy. Now you can be an assassin again. [01:37:18] Speaker B: I mean, it could be fun. I mean, I probably would watch it on a streaming channel at some point. I don't think I'll take a special trip to the cinema unless the reviews come back and go, oh, this is amazing. [01:37:29] Speaker A: 20Th Century Studios. So it's going to be Disney, isn't it? It'll be a Disney plus title I'll throw around at some point. But returning to the world of Keanu Reeves and our final budget trailers, Secret Level, which has a lovely shot of Mr. Keanu Reeves playing a pilot in an Armored Core episode in there. And he's confirmed voice actor in there as well. So this is kind of if. What if Love, Death and Robots was about video games. So yeah, so we've got Armored Core, you've got Concord, which I'm really going to be interested to see how they'll deal with that episode considering the game completely imploded and blew up in the space of two weeks. God of War, Crossfire, Dungeons and Dragons, Exodus, Mega Man, Pac Man, Sifu, the Outer Worlds, Spell and Key. And the one I'm most interested in, the Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 based episode. [01:38:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm very much looking forward to the Warhammer one. It. There's so much lore behind that franchise. It just feels insane that there's not more kind of visual medium depicting it. [01:38:39] Speaker A: So I think the best thing I've ever seen in the Warhammer 40k stuff is that fan made film which was on YouTube and now is no longer available on YouTube because screw you, Games Workshop. Astartes. Which was basically, this is what happens when space Marines turn up. It's like the big boys are in the room now it's like you just see all the normal troops just get obliterated and then know the space Marines are coming in. And that's how it should be with the space breeds. It's supposed to be like gods of the battlefield. And I hope they do keep that vibe. But it's by what's his face. I can remember his name. Tim Miller. So director of the first two Deadpool movies, I think. [01:39:22] Speaker B: Just the first one. [01:39:23] Speaker A: Just the first one. But he also runs a Blur studio which is very well known in the gaming industry for making some of the best game trailers and the game cut scenes you will ever see. They do like quite a lot of the opening works and opening scenes and trailers. The really interesting cast they've got as well. So Arnie's back and Patrick, I think Patrick is his son, I'm assuming. [01:39:46] Speaker B: Patrick, Patrick Schwarzenegger. Yeah, yeah. He was in the Gen V TV show spin off from the Boys. [01:39:54] Speaker A: Kevin Hart, Gabrielle Luna, Michael Beach, Emily Swallow, Arianna Greenblatt, who seems to be in everything under the known universe at the moment, including Borderlands. And yeah, they look fun. I think they just look like it's going to be a fun anthology series and if you don't like it, you can skip on and move to the next one a little bit. How Love Death and Robots was. [01:40:20] Speaker C: Yeah, Love Death and Robots was fantastic. I'm very much looking forward to all of this. I think aside from the Warhammer one, the one I'm most intrigued by is Pac man. Just to see what plot they managed to eke out of it. [01:40:36] Speaker B: I mean, there has been several Pac man cartoon TV series in the past. So it's rife, it's got lore, it's got history. History. I mean, I'm a big fan of any. Anything that is increasing the audience of animated stuff and gets people away from the idea of like all that animation is for kids, you know, animation is for everybody. It all comes down to the story and the content. You know, the fact that we've had Love Deaf and Robots, which was a very adult, mature stuff. But we also had like Star Wars Visions, we've had the what if series, you know, stuff that's going. Animation can be an incredible storytelling medium and bringing that audiences in to stuff and using again, different animation styles, different studios. The Warhammer one, obviously, just because, you know, there's a lot to do that I'm kind of looking forward to. The Mega man and the Spelunky episodes. [01:41:34] Speaker A: As well, was really featured quite heavily, wasn't it? [01:41:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I'm not a massive fan of the animation stuff that you're just trying to ape. Live action. I'm kind of like, yeah, just do it. Live action if you want to do it. So the ones that are more realistic, so those were the ones in the love definite robots I was less enamored of, but the ones that kind of lent into what animation can do. So I kind of like the slightly cartoony. The Mega man one's got that kind of astro boily feel to it and that kind of like, you know, large headed, weirdly proportioned characters. So I'm kind of. I'm leaning towards the ones that are kind of doing something interesting with the animation. The ones that are a little bit more or less, they're just kind of cut scene extensions. I'm kind of like, oh, okay, but if the story's good, I'm not going to care. [01:42:20] Speaker A: Quite interesting you say that because Dungeons and Dragons you'd expect to be like the big standout franchise with how popular D and D is at the moment. It seems to be just. Yeah, we want to look more into the video gamey stuff rather than the D and D side of stuff. [01:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:42:34] Speaker C: I suppose D and D. [01:42:38] Speaker A: You'Re pretty well served for content at the minute. [01:42:40] Speaker C: Yeah, you can pretty much do what you want with it. So it's not going to be characters that people recognize in the same way that the video game based ones are. [01:42:50] Speaker A: Yeah, but Sifu is one of the really interesting ones for me because that's got a really interesting mechanic in the game of you die in the game and you get. You come back and you come back stronger and everything but you come back older. So the more times that you died, the older and kind of less health your character has, even though it's more skilled, etc. So interesting concept and how they're going to introduce that one. [01:43:12] Speaker C: Yeah, it's going to be quite fun I think seeing how they managed to kind of integrate some of the mechanics. Gameplay mechanics into the program. [01:43:21] Speaker B: Yeah, looks good though. I'm kind of pleased that it's coming. Hopefully it does well enough that we get more with diff with different games because there's. So there's a lot of games out there now that are. Will lend themselves to this kind of expanded storytelling. [01:43:39] Speaker A: Well, again they're an art form, same as animation. [01:43:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. If it does well, I can imagine that there might have been games that were unwilling to give someone the rights to make something, but once it's got a bit of a track record, they might be More willing. [01:43:55] Speaker A: I mean, I was quite interested in the studios that involved. So quite a lot of Sony stuff, as you'd expect from software, of course, with Armored Core, Capcom, Bandai, Namco. So it's lent more into the Japanese side of the gaming industry. So interesting to see if they can get like Microsoft and those on side. And Nintendo as well would be fantastic. Just kind of. [01:44:17] Speaker B: I can't see. I can't see Nintendo leaning into being lumped in with some more very serious Ace Attorney woodwork. [01:44:27] Speaker C: I think the trouble with Nintendo is once they get involved, they're very prescriptive. Well, there's stuff like Mario and stuff where it already has quite a lot of franchise stuff out there. But yeah, if they want to rely on him, oh, God, they'd put Chris. [01:44:42] Speaker A: Pratt in it, wouldn't they? [01:44:44] Speaker B: And I think for Japanese studios, it's not an unknown thing, because Japanese studios, there's been lots of animated films based on games over the years. I mean, God knows how many Resident Evil cartoon series. [01:45:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:45:01] Speaker B: So there's loads of those. So I think that Japanese studios have got a history of kind of being integrated with other art forms, which I think is, you know, Western studios. It's game or it's not. [01:45:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:45:12] Speaker B: So I kind of. And Warhammer's an obvious one because that has got already a massive expanded universe in terms of novels. [01:45:18] Speaker A: And same for Halo, where they had the TV series which didn't do great. [01:45:25] Speaker B: But I'm kind of looking forward to it. It looks cool. The animation looks great. Tell me good stories. That's good. [01:45:31] Speaker C: Yeah, awesome. [01:45:33] Speaker A: So any particular trailer? Pick out the pile we've had to recap. Mission Impossible, secret level. The three MCU trailers we had, which was Captain America, Brave New World, what if Season three, Thunderbolts, Ballerina. [01:45:55] Speaker C: I think I'm going to go with secret level. All of them look great. I don't think there's anything in there that I've sort of watched and thought, not that fussed about that one, but I think just for the originality of it. And I love a good anthology thing. So, yeah, I'm going with secret level. Keith. [01:46:15] Speaker B: I might have gone with the amateur, but no, I don't. [01:46:18] Speaker A: I think we'd all not go with the amateur. [01:46:21] Speaker B: I wouldn't pick anyone out particularly. I think all of them, even the amateur did something to make me think, okay, this. I'm interested in these things. There wasn't any that kind of me went, I don't think this is for me. I think in some way, or each one you know, the animated stuff obviously looks great. So I think if I was going to pick them out, the what if And Secret level, just because there's more to those and there's something for everyone. So you're probably going to get more out of those episodes than anything else. [01:46:54] Speaker A: I'm going to go for Mission Impossible, even though it's got the most annoying name of any of the trailers we watched, I think so 96 is when the first film came out. So a culmination of 28 years worth of a movie franchise. Something to kind of weird, weirdly look forward to in a. I've enjoyed the character of Ethan Hunt all the way through and yeah, well, there's been some great and some not great films, J.J. abrams. [01:47:21] Speaker B: But yeah, maybe they'll surprise you and when it's released it'll be called Mission Impossible. Dead Reckoning Part two, the Final Reckoning. [01:47:30] Speaker A: How many times can we put. Can you imagine the size of the DVD case you need for. [01:47:34] Speaker B: Maybe they just put this trailer out and went, that's a lot to put on screen. [01:47:37] Speaker C: How many colons can we get into one film title? [01:47:41] Speaker A: But yeah, I really enjoyed. Especially since Chris McQuarrie has taken over since Rogue Nation, I've really enjoyed that kind of run through of the franchise. So I think, yeah, it's. It's basically just a four part movie. If you put them all together, that's quite fun. [01:47:56] Speaker B: And more Hayley Atwell. [01:47:57] Speaker A: So more Hayley Atwell. So it's time for our regular roundup of what geeky thing have we been watching recently or listening to or viewing or playing or whatever we want to do in our geeky way. So I'm gonna start off with you, Sam. What have you been up to? [01:48:18] Speaker C: I've watched the first three episodes of Arcane. Which season? [01:48:24] Speaker A: Two. [01:48:24] Speaker C: Season two. Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah. Which the first season was. I genuinely think one of the best things that's been on Netflix that I've seen at all. If you'd told me five, 10 years ago that one of my favorite programs would be a thing based on League of Legends, I would not have believed you. [01:48:49] Speaker A: One of the most toxic franchise games of all time. [01:48:52] Speaker C: It's just something that's not entered my radar beyond Arcane at all. But it's so good. It's this beautiful sort of oil paintery style animation. You could take any frame of it and stick it on your wall. So the plot is essentially a sort of city divided into two. There's the kind of wealthy upper city of Piltover and The kind of more sort of seedy, less well off undercity of more pork. [01:49:27] Speaker A: Sorry, Sorry. [01:49:33] Speaker C: As a concept that has been done before, but they do it really well. And it follows in particular two sisters, Violet and Powder as she's originally known, Jinx as she becomes in later life. So Powder voiced by sorry Vi voiced by Hailee Steinfeld and Jinks voiced by Ella Purnell. So both very, very talented actresses. And yeah, it's basically about. So the first few episodes of season one are about them as children and how they kind of end up falling apart and going down separate paths. And then the rest of the program sort of follows where those paths take them. And yeah, I can't give enough praise to the animation. It plays with different styles quite a lot as well. There's a particular standout scene in the first season where there's a couple of characters battling on a bridge. Both characters are introduced as children in the earlier episodes and as they're fighting it almost sort of switches to them kind of seeing each other as children play fighting when they were younger and now they've sort of gone their separate ways and become enemies. And it just sort of builds this proper kind of backstory and emotional heft into a fight scene that is a relatively short scene and could have just been really kind of run the mill. And then. So the first few episodes of season two each has at least one scene where again, they play with the animation a bit. There's a funeral episode in particular or funeral scene in an episode where all the kind of background art becomes this sort of almost washed out chalk and charcoal kind of style. And it's. It sort of draws the focus into the main characters that and their kind of the emotions that they're going through. And yeah, it really, really exciting storyline. Yeah, I can't recommend it enough. Don't be put off by the fact that it's League of Legends or that it's animated. It's really grown up, mature storytelling and consistently ridiculously highly rated on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. [01:52:16] Speaker A: And oh, it's some of those beautiful animation I've seen. And yeah, as you said, Ella panel as Jinx is absolutely fantastic and she's mainly probably more known for the Fallout TV series recently and she's done a lot of other stuff. [01:52:31] Speaker C: Seems to be forging a good path of video game adaptations that are working. [01:52:37] Speaker A: I think. She's also played a serial killer at some point on British tv. [01:52:40] Speaker B: There was a show called Sweet Pea which has just been released. So she got a major role in that. She's basically. She's the lead actress. Major role. [01:52:52] Speaker A: Yeah. But no, it's a fantastic show. Really, really enjoyed season one and really interesting, the whole kind of. Yeah. Two sides of the same coin. These two sisters who completely different lives and then get thrown back together. It's an interesting take. [01:53:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:53:07] Speaker A: Keith, how about yourself? [01:53:10] Speaker B: I was going to go with one thing, but I've decided to go with something else, strangely enough, just to break things up. So I'm going with a record release, a vinyl. A vinyl record release, obviously available in other forms on digital and whatever it is. Band I've been following for quite some time and I went to see this particular album live recently up the Warwick Arts Centre and it's the Last Flight by Public Service Broadcasting. So Public Service Broadcasting have been kicking around for a while now and this is the fifth studio album that they've done. And basically each album is, in effect a concept album which tells a story. So the one that most people might know is Race For Space, which did side one was the kind of Russian story and then side two was the American moon thing. So that was a lot of that kind of album became hugely popular. [01:54:06] Speaker A: There was a big thing about was the big single. [01:54:07] Speaker B: Off that go was the big Signal and they've since done stuff about British coal mining and they did a BBC, BBC Proms, which was the only time they performed it. It was this noise, I think it was called, which was basically about the origin of the BBC. The first transmissions from the BBC, which was brilliant, done as a live performance, has since been released as a live album. So the Last Flight is the latest concept, Alban, and it's basically the story of Amelia Earhart's last flight, which is interesting because it's the first time they've really used content that wasn't. Isn't generated from the original stuff, obviously, because of the theme. There aren't any really recordings of what Amelia Earhart was talking. There isn't any kind of like. Usually their albums are full of like little samples and stuff from the actual event. So some of this is a little conjured up, but it's a beautiful album. It kind of. It goes through kind of like why she does what she does. Talk about the aircraft, the aircraft that she flew at the time, the electro aircraft was a completely new thing. And again, there's an element of her relationship with her partner and stuff and that kind of stuff. So it's kind of uplifting and then very melancholy towards the end. It's just beautifully put together musically. Fantastic. They have A couple of female vocalists help this story through. There's a German singer songwriter called Ira who does quite a bit of the tracks that are on there. But if you've ever heard any of the other public service broadcasting stuff before, it's definitely kind of peak musically done. It's just really beautiful stuff and it's kind of like, you know, it takes you on a journey and he's just. [01:56:02] Speaker A: Yeah, because they're all multi instrumentalists on there. [01:56:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like you've got your drummer and you've got Mr. B, who does all that kind of visual stuff as well. So if you get to see the live show, there's a lot of video elements and stuff, so that they've done the first part of the tour, but they're coming back to the uk, like in March next year. And I think the closest one to Birmingham is Wolf Run or whatever they call it the Wolverhampton Civic hall, whatever they call that now. So it's definitely worth seeing that it's a great show. Obviously they include other elements from their previous records in there as well, but, yeah, I just. I was. I was just bowled over by how beautiful a record it was. You know, kind of quite a poignant. If you know anything about what happens to Amelia during her last flight, I won't spoil that for people. It's worth looking at her history as a. As a pivotal figure in kind of aviation, American history and kind of like, kind of things. She appears in the Second Night at the Museum film, strangely tying us back to Rami Malek and stuff as well. Played by Amy Adams. [01:57:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the headlined Mosley Folk Festival, which is kind of a big local folk festival a few years back, but unfortunately I missed the opportunity to see them, so it's definitely on my. [01:57:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a beautiful record, highs and lows, but it just ends. Just the last track is just very heart tugging. It's, you know, you feel. It's an emotional roller coaster, really. It's a great record and I highly recommend it. So, yeah, give it. Give it a try. So it's the Last Flight by Public Service Broadcasting. [01:57:43] Speaker A: I'm going to go for a different medium because again, I have also changed. I was going to talk about the subscriber, but we've talked about that previously and it's a fantastic film. We should go watch it. I think it's a movie at the minute, but I'm going to go for a book, which I started, I gave up and then I restarted. I'm really Glad I restarted it mainly through the advice of Sam and another friend, which was Hyperion, which I'm on the final chapter of at the moment. So the book by Dan Simmons, basically a sci fi version of Chaucer's Tales, if you've ever kind of similar kind of structure. Pilgrims on a journey. It's the final journey to this planet called Hyperion, which lots of weird stuff is going on. It's kind of the center of a religion in the hegemon. Hegemony of man, I think is the word to phrase it. [01:58:30] Speaker C: I should point out I've not read this book, so I don't think it was me that recommended it to you. [01:58:35] Speaker A: But might have been. Yeah, my other friend. Yeah. But yeah, it's. It's a fantastic book. It really, really deserves it. It kind of varies between fantasy and sci fi, so if you ever read like Chaucer's Tale, it's kind of. Each pilgrim tells them their story of how they've gone onto this pilgrimage, how they've ended up on this journey. So we hear a tale about a poet, about somebody in the military, about a private detective. And each one of the little subtails is kind of an example of that genre of fiction. So like the detective story is kind of like that hardball noir kind of detective one. The war story, I'm not going to get into too much because don't really want to spoil the book, but it's a absolutely fantastic book to read. [01:59:23] Speaker C: I don't. [01:59:23] Speaker A: Keith, have you ever read. [01:59:25] Speaker B: I've never read it. It's quite old. [01:59:27] Speaker A: I think it's late 80s. 89. [01:59:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:59:30] Speaker A: But basically it's picked it up on Audible sale on audiobooks. I'm trying to get back into audiobooks again at the moment because I find them great ways to just disconnect and separate myself out. There's like one fantastic story about a scholar whose daughter goes to Hyperion. She's in one of the time tunnels, which is kind of one of these things that's on the planet. And she starts aging backwards. So she like she's 20 when she's in the time tunnel. And it's the 24 years following her accident of how she reverse ages. And how do you cope with somebody like that who every single day they got. They don't remember anything previously. They remember their life story up until that day. So every time resetting the day, basically. Bit like, is it 50 days of some. What was that. What was that movie? 500 days. First something, first year. 500 first nights or something. Like that. 50 first dates. [02:00:31] Speaker C: That's what it is. [02:00:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I got there eventually, but it's absolutely fantastic. And the other thing that I watched as well, because I'm going to be reading have to was Spaceman, which was the. Talking of 50 first dates. [02:00:45] Speaker B: Adam Sandler. [02:00:46] Speaker A: Adam Sandberg movie. [02:00:49] Speaker C: The one with the spider. [02:00:50] Speaker A: The one with the giant spider. So if you're an arachnophobe, do not watch this film. But my God, that man can act when he wants to. It's pretty much just him for 90% of the movie. In a spaceship on his own, acting to a spider. But it is absolutely beautiful and it's got one of the best finishes of any kind of space movie I've ever seen. I would really, really recommend watching it. I know it came out on Netflix. I think it's about middle of the year, wasn't it? [02:01:19] Speaker B: It was a while back, yeah. Yeah. [02:01:21] Speaker A: But it is so beautifully made and such a touching story and it's kind of. It deals around love, around pathos, around what. What does it mean to be human and. Yeah. So beautifully made. Really do recommend it. I think it's Paul Dano playing the spider. [02:01:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:01:46] Speaker A: But because it's set in Eastern Europe, so it's in. Basically find out in a second. [02:01:52] Speaker C: Is it not such in space? [02:01:54] Speaker A: No. Well, it's. He's a Czech astronaut. He's a Czech cosmonaut, basically. And there's this big event happens in space near Jupiter and lots of countries trying to rush there to be the first. And he basically gets put on this bootstrapped rocket. And because he's on solo mission, the South Koreans are coming behind him, so they're like chasing each other to get to this phenomena first. But he's been on this spaceship for about a couple of hundred days at this point. So it's that thing of loneliness and that connection back to humanity. And Kumail Naya's in there and he's kind of like the person who speaks to him. Carey Mulligan plays his kind of wife who's kind of very separate and very kind of distant. And it's what happens. And she's pregnant at the time and it's. All of this is going on. And at the same time, this guy's the furthest away from humanity any human has ever been and is all on his own. It's an absolutely fantastically beautiful story. And Paul Dano is amazing and he makes you actually care and love for a spider, which is a very hard thing to do when you're just playing A voice. I mean, it's got a lot of parallels, I think, to Moon. A lot of people compared it to Moon. About that thing of what does he even make it to be human again? Trying not full Moon again. Brilliant movie. Duncan Jones is one of his finest works. Really go watch that. But I would really recommend it. And it just sounds so weird when you talk about Adam Sandler playing this very kind of serious, beautiful role. And it kind of harks back to his other works where he. Where he plays dramatic roles and he's a fantastic dramatic actor and I think people forget about that sometimes. [02:03:30] Speaker C: I think that's. Yeah, so that's the one thing that's put me off watching it is I hate his comedy stuff generally. And so, yeah, normally when I see his name attached to something, my brain sort of switches off a little bit. But I loved Uncut Gems. I know he can act Punch Drunk. [02:03:48] Speaker A: Love is fantastic as well, which again, not enough recognition. [02:03:52] Speaker C: So, yeah, I'll have to give it a go. [02:03:54] Speaker A: I would really recommend it. And it's. It's one of those films where you can just put it on and just soak up the vibes. And I think, Keith, you'd really like it. It's got that kind of 70s sci. [02:04:03] Speaker B: Fi, silent running type thing. [02:04:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like the spaceship is obviously falling apart around. It's like him having to fix everything every 10 minutes and then. [02:04:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a little bit like Sam, I've added it to my list because I was intrigued by the premise, but it's that initial thing of like, am I going to regret this once I start? And it's all going to be a bit gurney and kind of like, you. [02:04:24] Speaker C: Know, Adam Sandler is the freezing cold ocean of the acting world. You need to get your shoulders in. But it's going to take a little bit of mental preparation for this is. [02:04:37] Speaker A: Like you've got Adam Sandler and Kunal Nayar on one side and then you've got Carey Mulligan, Isabella Rossellini, Paul Dano on the other side. It's kind of. These are two worlds that don't usually mix together very well. But it is a fantastic movie. I would really recommend watching it. Thank you very much for joining us on the geeky Burmy podcast this issue. Sam, where can we find you online? [02:05:02] Speaker C: You can find me on Blue sky and Threads and instagram, all @sd edwards89 and also on the Geeky Brummy website every Thursday doing the film roundup. [02:05:15] Speaker A: Keith, how about yourself? [02:05:17] Speaker B: You can find me personally as Hardlock Hotel on Bluesky Threads and Instagram, strangely enough. And again, Wednesday's big day is the Geeky Brummie Comics. Wednesday Comics as it's now been rebranded, which is basically a comic of the week, A few must reads and if there's a good trade, a trade. So all kinds of things for all kinds of comic readers. So yeah. So join me on Wednesdays on the Geeky Brewing Socials and full blogs website. [02:05:45] Speaker A: And you can find me on MSN Messenger, ICQ, AIM and GeoCities. But no, you can also find me at Ryan Parish on bluesky and Threads and Instagram and you can find us all, as we said, on geekybrummy, on all of our [email protected] if you're watching it, you're probably watching us on YouTube. So please, while you're here, don't forget to drop a Like and subscribe on the little buttons. It does help with engagement, we do promise. I know everybody tells you that, but it does really help. Yeah. On the geekybromer.com website on your podcasting service of choice, which you're probably listening to us on if you're not watching us. Again, Lee's not here and Matt's not here, but whilst whilst they're not here in presence, they're here in spirit. So you can find Lee at the Cheap Fairy, I believe on Threads and Bob the Pet Fairy on Instagram and you can find Matt at matchstickmat on Instagram as well. Don't also forget to follow Geeky Goings on as it transitions from the Hell Hole, which is the X website that we like to all move away from to Blue Sky. But if you're in Birmingham area, there's some fantastic events etc coming up and if you've got anything you want to add, drop us a DM on GeekyGames on BlueSky Social and we'll give you a plug. Thank you very much for joining us and we shall see you again soon. [02:07:07] Speaker C: Cheerio, folks. [02:07:11] Speaker B: This issue of the Geeky Brewing podcast was hosted by Ryan Parrish with Sam Edwards and Keith Bloomfield. This issue was produced by Viv Parish and this is a Geeky Brummie production.